


The Exit Ramp: A Story of Parallel Time 1796

by Anglocat



Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: F/M, Joshua Collins' A+ Parenting Skills, Parallel Time 1970 (Dark Shadows)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 45,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anglocat/pseuds/Anglocat
Summary: Disclaimer: Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production...and I am not Dan.In Memoriam, Jonathan Frid & Grayson HallInspired by a conversation with Vickie, Barnabas Collins chooses not to fire his pistol at Angelique.  His change of heart sets them on a parallel stream of time, transforming their lives, and the lives of all around them.  Takes as canon the A/B background in Lara Parker's novel "Angelique's Descent," including the youthful romance between Barnabas and Angelique depicted.  Note that in some ways this tale is a fix-it, but destiny exacts a price!Some fluff, but mostly character driven.  The Supernatural is not easily escaped, and redemption is hard work!
Relationships: Angelique Bouchard Collins/Barnabas Collins, Barnabas Collins/Julia Hoffman, Peter Bradford/Victoria Winters
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. Brink of Death

“ _My name is Victoria Winters. Flung back into the year 1795, and surrounded with familiar faces who bear different names and identities, I have been tricked into leaving my refuge in the Old House, and captured by the mad Reverend Trask, who seeks to have me hanged as a witch. The chaos erupting in the Old House after my arrest may lead to my death or my deliverance…”_

She swept down the stairs, eyes flashing, her blonde hair swirling about those angelic features, features that had concealed from him that she was a witch. In her absence, he had loaded the dueling pistol, placed it in its case, and set the case in the chair before the mantle. He was steeled, ready for the utmost extremity if required.

“This is the way I will keep you here, Barnabas,” she said, her voice tremulous with—what? Anger, certainly, betrayal, and even hurt.

As he faced his wife, he saw her eyes, large orbs, shimmering with emotion, opening a portal to her storm-tossed heart. “What are you doing with Sarah’s doll?” “Do you remember when Sarah was very ill? She had a terrible pain, in her shoulder. Here.” She stabbed a pin into the doll’s shoulder.

“Angelique—”

“And another, here in her chest!” Her eyes danced with emotions he could not even fathom.

“Give me that doll!”

“You stay away from me!” she shrilled, and then went on to describe how she would torment Sarah to keep him at the Old House, still her husband. In vain he promised to stay; she no longer believed him, she said, but he would do nothing, as long as his sister hung at the brink of death.

“Brink of death!”

“She will not die unless you deceive me again,” she spat out, “but she will come close…very close.” And another pin entered the doll’s torso.

He backed up to the chair. To open the case and draw out the pistol was the work of an instant. He wheeled, aimed, and … “Barnabas, No!”

Her cry was that of a desperate woman, a woman whose heart was breaking at the sight. Even as he registered her despair, the beautiful face before him was replaced in his mind’s eye with the shattered visage of his uncle—his almost brother, his best friend—Jeremiah, whom he had killed with this very pistol, in anger, in pride, in vengeance.

He did not pull the trigger.

“Madness,” he murmured, and said it again. He remembered the odd phrase he had heard Miss Winters explain to the children, the “exit ramp,” a chance to change direction, or to go a different way than continuing on as one had begun, or so he had taken her to mean. And after years of rash, instinctual decisions, and the losses of this past year, Barnabas Collins wanted to go no further in the way in which he had begun. He longed for this “exit ramp.”

When he looked again at Angelique, he saw her tears. Were they only for herself? Or were any of them for him? Barnabas cautiously set the pistol down, and approached his wife. He knelt before her, and reached up to take her hand.

“Angelique.” She looked down at him. “Keep the doll. Keep the pins. You can use them if I betray you. But we are all we have. You and I have nothing but each other. Please don’t hurt my sister, it isn’t necessary.”

He paused, his words hanging in the air, and added, “don’t make it impossible for me to love you.”

She looked down into his face, and whatever she saw must have reassured her, as she carefully took the pins from the doll, and placed them separately on the table by the door. Then she knelt down with him and took his hands in hers.

“How can you love me? You only have room in that heart of yours for Josette.”

He weighed his answer carefully; she was too insightful to deceive, he must speak only the truth to her.

“It is true that I have loved Josette. But it is also true that she and I cannot be together.”

“Why not? You know she was unfaithful to you only because of magic—my magic.”

“That is true,” he replied, “but you forget that I had a hand in our tragedies. I killed Jeremiah. You did not make me do that. I slew him, in cold blood, of my own damned pride and anger. How could I take his widow into my arms, without seeing again what I did to him?”

“Barnabas, do not lie to me. I could not bear it if you did.”

The sheen of more tears hazed those beautiful eyes.

He posed the question he had earlier only asked himself: “Who are those tears for, Angelique?”

“Oh, Barnabas, they are all for you.”

She seemed sincere. She was a skilled liar, but the exit ramp required a leap of faith, it seemed. He chose to take that leap.

“Angelique, you know I do not yet love you as a husband should love his wife. But I swore to love you, and I mean to love you. Surely love is more than just an emotion; it must also be a promise. And that promise I have made to you."

"But it must not all be duty, Barnabas," she replied.

"Certainly you must know that I always…desire you.”

She smiled, a little uncertainly. “Do you?”

“You know I do.”

“But you know what I am, and that I am responsible for--”

“I know. And yet, what else can we do? Had I let matters stand where you left them, they would be happy together. The responsibility is not yours alone, Angelique.”

He rose to his feet, then, and helped her up.

“So are you saying we deserve each other, husband?”

“No. I am saying we need one another. I need for all that has happened to not be in vain, and you need--” He laughed gently—“what is it that you truly need, Angelique?”

“I need you. To love me and to be loved by me.” Their eyes met. He remembered taking her maidenhead back in Martinique, the pert, saucy young beauty that she was then; their callow prattle of marriage, and his departure. He smiled again, and took the first step. 

Come, wife, let us to bed.”

As they climbed the stairs, his arm snaked around her back. “Stay with me tonight,” He asked her.

“Oh, Barnabas, …yes.”


	2. "No Son of Mine"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barnabas turns his attention to his estranged family and to the troubles of Miss Victoria Winters. Angelique is surprised that her husband has conceived a viable plot, and is prepared to go along. Joshua remembers his time as a cat, but tells no one.

A week after Barnabas and Angelique truly began their marriage, Barnabas awoke with the sunrise. He kissed his sleeping wife and went downstairs. There he found the fire being built by their lone servant, a skivvy named Patience, a bedraggled girl Angelique had brought home from a tavern where the patrons were becoming far too interested in her ripening charms. Angelique, far more than Barnabas, knew the likely fate of young girls in such places without protection. 

She had, during her own unorthodox girlhood, seen too many girls, barely more than children, abused, corrupted, and, ultimately, destroyed. On one of her visits to Collinsport, Angelique had seen the girl cornered by a young ruffian, and, using her social prestige as “Mistress Collins,” had cowed the young brute, and brought the confused and frightened child home with her. 

Patience clumsily curtseyed to the Master of the house, and shyly offered to make him eggs.

“Indeed?” Barnabas replied, unable to believe the unlikely servant capable of cooking anything that could be eaten.

“Aye,” she said, “I done watch the Mistress do it, and can make it nice for ye, Sorr.”

“Go on, then,” Barnabas answered, placing a few copper coins on the table beside him, “and if the breakfast is good, these shall be yours.”

She grinned toothily, “Aye, that they shall be!”

Barnabas smiled at her, and prepared his morning coffee, using the mortar and pestle to grind the beans, just so. One thing he had learned from Abigail, at any rate, he reflected, and the thought of his superstitious aunt reminded him that Miss Winters was due to go to trial in a fortnight. As his coffee steeped, he began to consider how he could assist the imperiled young governess, without endangering his own wife.

For Angelique was now his wife in truth, and, despite all his fears, he had found not just desire and pleasure in her arms, but tenderness. Their love had indeed begun to grow, and Barnabas had come to see her need for him had been stoked by their youthful dalliance, his promises of marriage, and his betrayal. Yet another way in which simply laying all the torment of the past year at Angelique’s feet was a damnable falsehood. His recognition of his own role in her bitterness leavened his occasional moments of resentment, moments that were becoming few and far between in this week together.

There was no way to convince the court that no witchcraft had taken place on the estate; his own strange, fleeting illness, the rumors of love spells, the sighting of a cruelly maimed Jeremiah—maimed by him, Barnabas reminded himself, as he was tempted to blame Angelique—lumbering about the estate, and all the other strange events Trask had used to obtain an information against Miss Winters and bring the poor girl to trial—all of these would feed the carnival atmosphere, unless he could find a way to divert the crowd—to divert the crowd…

Barnabas laughed at his own notion.

There might very well be an answer, one that would harm nobody and yet free Miss Winters. It was audacious, clever, even—qualities that Barnabas would not previously have ascribed to himself, and yet, he had a fleeting glimpse of how Angelique could have been caught up in her own plotting, the cleverness of her delicate schemes, her manipulation of her social betters. 

He couldn’t help it, but he had even joined in her laughter when she had told him about the incident of the white-and-black cat. He wondered if his father remembered the experience.

“Here ye are, Sorr,” Patience said, and to his astonishment the eggs were golden-hued, delicately scrambled, the bacon just as he liked it, and the tomatoes carefully sliced. He brought a forkful to his lips and tasted.

“Excellent,” he nodded, and poured the coppers into her palm. “But where did you get the bacon?” He would have to bring in more comestibles, as soon as money was more plentiful.

“Mr. Stokes brought ‘un over, Sorr. From big house.”

“How very kind of him. Was it with Mr. Joshua’s compliments, or Mistress Naomi’s?”

“Just Mr. Stokes, Sorr.”

“And how did you learn to make bacon, Patience?”

“Watched in the Eagle, Sorr.”

“Well, you did more than I expected, and better than I could have asked. Have this,” he said, handing her a silver coin. “Be sure to tell your Mistress how you won it.”

After his meal, and his coffee, Barnabas mounted the stairs again. Angelique was in a chair, combing out her golden hair. He stood behind her watching her in the mirror.

“You may not believe this, my love, but Patience made a very good breakfast for me just now.”

Angelique laughed, the sound no longer cruel or ominous. “We still need at least one more servant, Mister Collins,” she answered.

“At least,” he concurred, kissing her neck warmly. 

She caught his eye in the mirror, and asked “What are you planning, Barnabas?”

“It’s about Miss Winters.”

“Oh, dear. I don’t think there is anything we can do for her, my love.”

“Are you still hostile toward her?”

“Of course not,” Angelique answered, and he believed her. “I’d like to help her if only to thwart that odious Trask—as long as we were not put at risk.”

“Would you believe me if I said I had a plan?”

“No, Barnabas. You seem to me incapable of formulating a scheme—you are too goodhearted to manipulate people well.”

He leaned in and told her the idea that had struck him.

“Barnabas Collins! That’s almost as good as one of my schemes!”

“You think it will work?”

“It could. It really could, Barnabas. But don’t be too eager. Be a little. . .sardonic. Superior, even. You need to make them want to impress you.”

Later that day, after supper, but before dinner, Barnabas knocked at the heavy door of the new house—Collinwood, as his father was calling it.

“Mr. Barnabas!” Ben Stokes greeted him happily, “You look well!”

“You too, Ben.” He lowered his voice, adding “Thank you for the bacon” almost silently. Ben’s rubbery lips grinned as he nodded. “Who are ye here to see, Mr. Barnabas?”

“All of them, if they are gathered for tea.”

“They are, Mr. Barnabas,” Ben replied, smiling complicitly. “But ye’d know that, a course.” 

“Please announce me, Ben.”

“A course, Mr. Barnabas.” And, after hearing his name pronounced, he swept into the room, handing Ben his cape, and bowing politely to the company assembled.

“Good afternoon, Father, Mother.”

“You are no son of mine, sir,” his father began to bluster, a performance that was marred by his mother’s happy smile, Sarah’s flying into his arms as he knelt to receive her, and Daniel’s delighted cry of “Cousin Barnabas!” Only Aunt Abigail looked askance at him.

Joshua scowled, as much at the lack of support from his family as at the presence of his disowned son, if not more so—his wince at Barnabas’s appearance seemed as much wistful as it did censorious. Moreover, Joshua did not stand, let alone leave the room, and as Barnabas was coaxed into a chair, and poured a cup of tea, the older man’s face took on a subfusc air of contentment. 

After the children finished their tea, and went back to their play, the moment for business had come. Barnabas opened the bowling.

“So, the family du Prés has taken sail homeward?” he asked.

Joshua’s shock at the proposed topic of conversation was evident, but he answered gamely, if starchily, “Yes, sir, three days since. They are gone, and with them—".

“With them, the author of all our troubles, Father.”

Despite his stern exterior, Joshua spoke more softly than he intended.

“That is a harsh word to say of Josette, Barnabas.”

“I do not say it of her, Father. Indeed, I have not come to you until today because I owe Josette a debt, and this is how I pay it.”

Perplexity made the old man look disagreeable, but, if anything, his tone became yet more gentle.

“I do not understand you, son,” he murmured.

“For Josette’s sake—aye, and her father’s—I waited until I was sure they were gone from these shores forever.”

“But why, Barnabas?” his mother interjected.

“To save them all from the scandal, and to spare Josette more suffering. I could not reveal the identity of the real witch until she was safe.”

Abigail burst out “What do you mean the real witch? She is in custody already, awaiting trial for her satanic crimes!”

Barnabas rolled his eyes in a mute accord with his father. “That’s just where you are wrong, Aunt,” he firmly replied. “There is a witch, but it is not Victoria Winters who is the Devil’s concubine—it is the Countess Natalie du Prés!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to Anthony Hopkins. Ben Stokes is a loyal friend. Trask is in for a donnybrook.


	3. "She is the Devil's Concubine!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barnabas goes to the new house, Collinwood, and seeks to convince his family and his estranged father Joshua that they should act to help Victoria Winters. Peace breaks out.

Barnabas’s announcement that the Countess du Prés was “the Devil’s concubine” drew a sniff from Abigail, a raised eyebrow from Joshua, an astonished glance from Naomi, and a barely suppressed rumbling chuckle from Ben, hiding in the doorway.

“Is this some kind of a jape, Barnabas?” His father’s weary tone alerted him to the short space of time he had in which to carry them with him.

“No, Father. We must examine the facts, and draw the correct conclusion.”

“And how will we do that, boy?” Joshua growled.

“Simply by following what we know, and applying basic logic.” Barnabas leaned forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees.

“Aunt Abigail,” he began, “You were the first to recognize that witchcraft was afoot here, and we have had to accept facts that we would not have otherwise believed unless we were forced to. Is that not so?”

“Ye—es,” the aging woman unwillingly acknowledged, “You are not a believer by nature, Barnabas—a fault you share with your father, I might add—so I can understand how it was difficult for you to understand the truth.”

Barnabas smiled warmly at his aunt. “That is so, Aunt. But can you consider my belief that the Countess du Prés, and not Victoria Winters, is our witch?”

“I consider it nonsense, my boy,” she replied, her fondness for her nephew breaking through her grave mask, as she accepted his admission that she had been right as to the existence of witchcraft at Collinwood.

“Indulge me, Aunt,” he replied, still smiling at her. “As the family member who understands witchcraft better than any of us (He continued despite the audible snort from his father), would you describe the witch in question as clever or foolish?”

“Fiendishly clever,” Abigail answered readily enough.

“Impulsive or a plotter?”

“For certain a plotter, Barnabas—she took her time, used her knowledge of our family, and manipulated us all cunningly—even your father, Barnabas, whom she--”

“Enough, Abigail,” Joshua inveighed.

“So, someone who would have a plan for every contingency, who would play us all as easily if we were chess pieces?” Barnabas asked before she could reply or, worse, fall silent in dudgeon.

“For certes, nephew—a woman of wit and mettle, cunning in every sense of the word.”

Barnabas paused. “But does that sound like Victoria Winters, Aunt? She showed up in strange clothing, carrying a book that stated it was published in the Twentieth Century—and did not know anything about us when she arrived.”

“She could have been pretending ignorance, Barnabas.”

“Yes, Aunt, I admit it—but she could have been telling the truth, too. Father, you read that book; was its history of our family accurate up to the present?”

“On the whole, Barnabas, yes,” his father answered. “Its account of my father and grandfather accord with what I know, it described our English relations quite well—and its description of Jeremiah’s death,” he added darkly, ”its description of Jeremiah’s death is quite close to the record I had resolved to leave behind.”

“Indeed?” Barnabas mused.

“You intend to deceive the future, brother!” Abigail’s shock was palpable.

Once again, Barnabas interceded before the conversation could be led in a direction other than that of his choosing. 

“Aunt, it was not clever of Miss Winters to appear at our door in such an odd manner, to flaunt her knowledge of our future to Jeremiah, to myself, and even to Peter Bradford—she antagonized you right away, dear, just by her mode of dress, did she not?”

“Terribly immodest, Barnabas, and unseemly.”

“No doubt, Aunt—and terribly self-defeating. She’d made an enemy who suspected her as a witch almost immediately!”

“Yes, that is so,” Abigail dubiously conceded.

“Then is it not likely that her tale of having been dragged from her time to ours is more credible than that this naïve young woman is in fact an evil genius? That the witch pulled her back from what is to us the future and stranded her here among us?”  
Aunt Abigail looked troubled. “It is not impossible,” she acknowledged.

Barnabas continued. “What would the effect of the Collins family of her time having a séance when she was drawn back to us, Aunt?”

“A séance is a sinful thing, Barnabas. If Miss Winters was not a witch, participating in communication would have made her open to the devil and his agents.”

“Such as a witch from our time, looking for a stalking horse to blind us to her own evil acts, and seizing her when she was thus vulnerable?”

Abigail recoiled; her eyes were shadowed with doubt. More than anything in life, Abigail hated admitting error. Yet for all her superstition, all her need to be recognized as an authority, she was not a liar.

“I begin to think that I have erred,” She confessed, “but surely Reverend Trask would have judged aright?” The oracular pronouncement that Abigail had intended to deliver came out instead as a question.

“Reverend Trask is human, Aunt. If you can be wrong, surely he can be.”

“But the Countess—a witch!”

Barnabas was prepared for this moment. “Aunt,” he began, “you do recall that you immediately took against the Countess du Prés, just as sorely as you took against Miss Winters. Could that not mean that the former was the witch, and the latter her catspaw?”

Abigail pondered, and after some time slowly replied. “If you are right, and Miss Winters was innocent of witchcraft, her confessed involvement with the séance would have tainted her with an aura of brimstone. The Countess—why, she was always looking at them tarot cards of hers, right in front of your mother and me!”

Naomi murmured her agreement.

“Aunt,” Barnabas asked innocently, “I am not familiar with the tarot cards, but are they not used for divination?”

“Yes,” Abigail asserted strongly.

“And they are not Christian in their symbolism, surely?”

“Of course not; they are quite pagan!”

“I had thought,” Barnabas murmured, as if to himself, “that the tarot was a kind of witchcraft.”

“Well of course it is, boy!” Abigail interjected, “It is witchcraft to use those cards!”

“So we know at least that the Countess du Prés is herself a witch, then.”

Abigail nodded, certainty in her eyes.

“Aunt, you are a good judge of character,” Barnabas carefully avoided his father’s gimlet eye, “which of the two would more likely be the witch you have described—powerful, conniving, brilliantly evil?”

Abigail knew the truth now, she accepted it absolutely. 

“The Countess.” A beat passed and her battered honesty rose to the surface. “We must help Miss Winters. I do not care for her, but she is a pawn in the Devil’s plan, a victim of his terrible wiles, and those of the Countess. I must pray upon what to do about it all, Barnabas, but I see the truth now.”

Abigail rose, as did Barnabas, and she kissed her nephew on the cheek. “you have given me a great deal to think of, Barnabas, and perhaps saved me from myself committing a great sin.” She left the room, reflecting.

“So we will help Miss Winters,” Naomi declared as she too rose, a small smile on her face.

“Yes, Naomi,” Joshua agreed.

“Oh, Barnabas, I am glad you’ve come home,” she said.

“Naomi--” her husband grated.

“Hush, Joshua. You know you’ve been miserable over this estrangement between you and Barnabas. It’s not his fault that all these things happened.”

Barnabas’s lips tightened; his mother’s kindness was undeserved, as he knew full well.

“Leave us, Naomi. I have things I need to say to our son.”

“Oh?” Naomi answered, a worried frown creasing her lips.

“Do not worry, Naomi. I just want a word with our boy, dear.”

Reading her husband’s inner weather, Naomi allowed herself a small smile. “Perhaps he should dine with us—and that pretty wife of his.”

“Perhaps,” Joshua grunted, and Naomi left the room.

“You know, Barnabas, you might wish to consider reading for the bar.”

“I am a poor man, Father, as you know.”

“Stuff and Nonsense! Can you not make it easy for an old man to admit he was wrong?”

Barnabas smiled widely. “Of course I can, Father—and you are not old.”

“Well, I feel it, Barnabas. Do consider the bar, Barnabas; that was a fine forensic display you put on, you know.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Completely untrue, of course, but very well done.”

“Father--”

“No, don’t, Barnabas. Miss Winters has been on my conscience as well as yours. I have been cudgeling my brains to find an answer to how we can help her, and you have given us the glimmering of one. " Joshua paused for a moment.

"I take it from your choice of evils that you and Angelique have found happiness in your marriage?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And you feel confident that she will not turn her—abilities—against you?”

“I do.”

“Or against any other member of this family?” Joshua’s eyes pinned Barnabas as surely as they had in his boyhood.

“I am sure, Father,” he replied at length.

Joshua raked his eyes over Barnabas, and saw at last that his son was a man, and no longer a romantic fool. 

“Then you might wish to return home to the Old House, present my compliments to the fair Angelique, and ask her to join us for supper this evening. You might tell her that we have fatted calf on the board.”

His father’s rare smile warmed the son. He shook Joshua’s hand, and turned to go out.

“Oh, and Barnabas?”

“Pray tell your wife from me that she and I will be great friends as long as nobody hears tales of the adventures of Tybalt the cat. Yes, you can go on home, now, Barnabas. We shall sup at eight tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, my favorite line from Coppola's Dracula gets a workout. Barnabas can use his wits when he needs to. Joshua loves his son, despite everything.


	4. Rapprochement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peace is made at Collinwood, and new alliances within the once divided family. Before plunging into battle, Barnabas and Angelique enjoy a moment's peace.

Angelique Bouchard Collins found herself warmly welcomed by Naomi, as well as by Sarah and David. Joshua’s courtly behavior was laced with just a touch of irony, but Angelique felt it was more at his own expense than at hers. Certainly Barnabas found his father to be in unusually good spirits, though she marveled that what seemed to him striking cheer was simply an absence of unhappiness. Still, Joshua was keeping his word to Barnabas, she felt, and so she set out to charm all the household. Abigail was by no means susceptible, and Ben Stokes was clearly in dread of her, but Angelique did not mind that, as long as they used her with civility.

The beef was excellently done, the wine first rate, and the conversation flowed, as the walls of estrangement fell. Angelique blossomed under Naomi’s approval, cadged the occasional taut smile from Joshua, and even Abigail unbent a trifle. 

Millicent had drifted down to the table, musing about her handsome Lieutenant Forbes. After dinner, when the children had been dismissed to bed, the ladies had withdrawn, the gentlemen smoked their cigars or pipes, and the party reunited, Millicent’s romantic musings gave way to her concerns that “Dear Nathan” might be thought to have mercenary motives, and surely she should give all her money to her little brother Daniel and how she would go into town and affect the change first thing in the morning.

Joshua started, Barnabas winced, and Naomi looked appalled.

Angelique very carefully offered her new cousin a tentative smile, and suggested, “Does that not put Daniel in a false position? Mightn’t it be better to have the money put in trust with your cousin Joshua as your trustee? Perhaps with Barnabas as a co-trustee?”

Millicent smiled vaguely, and answered “But surely if the money is Daniel’s all will know that Nathan has married me for love…”

“But cousin Millicent, surely Daniel already has his inheritance?”

“Of course he does, cousin,” she assured Angelique, smiling bravely.

“Then wouldn’t it be best if you retain yours, and simply have it guarded for you by your zealous kinsmen?”

“After all,” Barnabas added, “my father would be protecting your future solvency—and that of my friend Nathan. A sailor’s pay does not go far, dear Millicent.”

“Do you think it best Cousin Barnabas?”

“I do.”

“And you, Cousin Joshua?”

“I do, Millicent.”

Millicent batted her eyes at Barnabas, smiling at him, “Should not you be my trustee, Cousin Barnabas?”

“Perhaps in conjunction with my father, if you truly wish it.”

“Oh, I do, I do, Cousin. Will that suit you, Cousin Joshua?”

The elder Collins managed to restrain himself, and merely replied, “Of course, dear Millicent. We shall take care of it in the morning.”

“Thank you, dear Cousin Barnabas—and you too, of course, Cousin Joshua.” Millicent cast a longing look at the younger man, one so overt that Ben Stokes took note of it.

As the evening broke up, Joshua confirmed the arrangements with Barnabas, adding in his son’s ear, “Your mother and aunt are willing to assist us in freeing Miss Winters. Perhaps after we see the solicitor, we should meet with young Bradford and let him know that we are all prepared to testify on her behalf.”

“Yes,” the son replied, “and to ensure we are all agreed as to how to cast the defense.”

“Agreed,” Joshua nodded.

As Angelique and Barnabas departed, Naomi kissed them both, and Barnabas shook his son’s hand. He then startled everyone—save for Angelique—by kissing his daughter-in-law gently on the cheek.

“Well done, my dear, glad you took a hand,” he praised.

“I’m so glad it worked, sir. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“You were right, you know,” he mused, “in America rising up should be encouraged.”

“Ah, if you keep on with such kindness, I might come to think you what the ladies call a dear old pet.”

“And not a romantic warrior from Shakespeare’s plays? Shall we venture Mercutio?” 

“No, he was too easily beaten. Perhaps his adversary, the Prince of the Cats?”

To Barnabas’s astonishment, his father laughed quite openly. “You’ll do, my dear, you’ll do,” he chuckled, and fondly took Naomi’s arm. 

As they walked across the estate to the Old House, Barnabas catechized his wife.

“How could you make my father laugh? I’ve never managed it.”

“Oh, my darling, he’s thrilled that he doesn’t have to disown you—I’m sure he was miserable every moment you were estranged! He was desperate to forgive you, and even to accept me, as long as he feels it safe. And he needs teasing, don’t you think? Your mother is too serious to do it, and as for your aunt—well, she’s worse than your father.”

“And Millicent is too absurd,” Barnabas added, “Imagine placing all that money in Daniel’s hands—even with my father as trustee, Forbes would have worn away at him, or brought him to court—who knows what would have happened to Daniel in the process?”

Angelique’s subtle glance met Barnabas’s.

“Do you fear for Daniel’s safety if Millicent had followed her original plan?” she asked.

“Of course,” he affirmed. “Forbes was a good enough friend when we were boys, but the Navy has made him greedy for advancement—and for gain. With only a child’s frail life between Forbes and wealth—I would fear for Daniel’s life.”

“That’s just what I thought, Barnabas—you weren’t displeased that I spoke out?”

As they stood approached the door of the Old House, Barnabas stopped, and gently turned his wife, pointing to the sky.  
“Do you see that moon? Full, bright, silvery?”

Angelique nodded.

“You are more beautiful, your laugh more pure refined silver than the poor moon can hope to boast, and your mind—far, far brighter than the quiet moon.” He took her in his arms, and kissed her, a long, passionate kiss, coupled with a lover’s embrace. As they entered the house together, Barnabas did not notice the single tear coursing down her cheek as Angelique thought to herself, “this—this is what it feels to be loved and to love!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" for Joshua's gibe--he knows the Bard surprisingly well.


	5. "The Devil's Advocates"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Collinsport, Joshua and Barnabas take steps to protect Millicent, and then meet with Peter Bradford and Victoria Winters. As the two young men plan strategy, Joshua and Victoria consider the unlikely friendship growing between Barnabas and Peter, and their struggle to free Victoria.

The morning’s business was quickly transacted, by legal standards, that is. Millicent charmingly fluttered over the solid, stolid Mr. Treeves, the middle-aged lawyer to whom Joshua brought her and Barnabas. Approving Joshua’s proposals for the trust, Treeves drew up the papers quickly enough, checking the fair copy and asking Barnanbas and Joshua to satisfy themselves that all was done in accord with Miss Millicent’s wishes. On her best behavior, seeking to charm all three men, Millicent readily signed the documents after they were finalized, casting sweet, slightly tremulous, smiles at each in turn.

Mr. Treeves walked Millicent out to meet the carriage and Ben Stokes, while the Collinses, father and son, took a glass of sherry and shared a pie at the Eagle. 

“You did well, Barnabas,” Joshua grunted, pressing his lips downward to avoid a smile. “You caught several errors that I missed. “

“Thank you, Father,” Barnabas replied, “Mr. Treeves seems a good man—is he a good lawyer?”

“By the standards of Maine, Barnabas, he is. We have a small bar here, and one that needs an infusion of young blood.”

The younger man cachinnated, “Am I right in thinking it is my blood that you wish to add to the mix, Father?”

“Oh, why not, Barnabas—you don’t appear to have a turn for commerce, but you do seem to have an aptitude for the law. Think about it, my boy,” the father almost entreated.

“Perhaps I will, Father,” Barnabas mused, and father and son finished their meals, paid the reckoning, and went on to their meeting with Peter Bradford and Victoria Winters. 

Victoria Winters was a beautiful woman by any reasonable standard; her angular cheekbones, regular features, and limpid eyes, sympathizing with all manner of people, drew approval and, from many men, open desire. The weeks in prison had dimmed her luster, but had not doused it. Indeed, several of the warders had been heard by Bradford to wonder at her concern for and kindness to her gaolers. Barnabas’s smile at that tale was more than a touch sad, nearly saying aloud his thought: “We must save her!”

Joshua Collins liked her, but not with the fire in the blood that stirred Peter Bradford, and the depth and heat of that fire disturbed the older man; Bradford was impetuous, and although he was intelligent, he would be rash in court, Joshua feared.

Fortunately, Barnabas and Bradford spontaneously took to each other with enthusiasm. Bradford explained that he was reading the law, but had only just started, and, after the two young men had become comfortable with each other, each knew the strengths of the other. 

To Joshua’s immense relief, Bradford agreed that Barnabas should do the examinations of witnesses, and that Peter should be in charge of submitting papers, and the closing arguments. Victoria herself seemed to breathe easier as Bradford relegated himself to the speechifying (as Joshua thought of it), leaving the detailed examination of his own family to Barnabas.

“You know, many would say that is poor practice,” Peter explained, “but if they are friendly witnesses, then being examined by one of their own will make them more comfortable than if–well, if I were to question them.”

“That’s very wise, Mr. Bradford,” Joshua nodded sagely. “I think you could have a future at the bar,” he added.

Bradford grinned, and Barnabas smiled with him. Victoria’s smile was more than a polite gesture for the first time that day. At length, Barnabas broached the primary strategy: Diverting the hysteria stirred up by Trask’s witch-hunt away from Victoria by offering the more formidable image of the Countess du Prés in her place. 

“Barnabas, we can’t!” Victoria exclaimed “We know nothing of the kind!”

Joshua raised his hand in a minatory gesture. 

“You know nothing of the kind, my dear Miss Winters,” he interjected, “but you have been away from Collinwood these past weeks, and so you know nothing of what we have leaned of late. You must forgive me, but the Countess was not the woman you thought her.”

“I didn’t care for her, it is true, Mr. Collins,” she replied, “she was cruel to me on occasion, but I would not hand her over to Trask without being sure of her guilt.”

“There is no question of handing anyone over to Trask, Miss Winters,” Barnabas explained. “The Countess is well on her way to Martinique by now, and she and her brother, and Josette are outside of his grasp.”

“They’re gone!”

“Yes. The evidence of the Countess’s interest in dark magic is vouched for by several witnesses whose credibility is beyond question. That you are not yourself aware of that evidence is not in any way relevant to the weight it will have. In fact, the less you know on this point, the better. Do you understand?”

Victoria nodded, and Peter beamed.

Joshua found himself leaning back, his normally ramrod straight back welcoming the support of the chair. Barnabas’s masterful tone was just right, he thought; gentle and reassuring in tone, but brooking no disagreement. Young Bradford saw it, too—his grin was vulpine, Joshua smiled thinly, as Bradford calculated how effective his new friend’s suasions could be. 

As the younger men delved into legal treatises Bradford had assembled, Joshua looked from each to the other. Bradford’s willingness to yield pride of place to Barnabas betokened a realism and a modesty that would serve the young man well; he was clearly leaning fast, and excelled at varnishing Barnabas’s pragmatic ratiocinations with a coat of legal authority.

Joshua had come to Collinsport to pay a debt this day—nay; two debts—one to Millicent, whose vulnerability to Nathan Forbes’s blandishments he had dismissed, and that to Victoria Winters, whose very life was imperiled by her service to his family. Harsh a master as Joshua could be, as Ben Stokes knew only too well, he nonetheless considered himself responsible for all of his dependents. Victoria’s peril was his burden, his responsibility. 

Watching his dilettante son seize that duty and bring to it powers of concentration that Joshua had never before observed in him, the father felt another kind of hope build in him. His disadvantageous marriage to Angelique proving to settle the young man had led Joshua to accept the fact with as much grace as he could muster—and the young woman’s charm and humor, sardonic as his own, had helped. But now, here on a duty visit in gaol, Joshua really thought he saw the making of his son.

He took a turn with Victoria as the young men pursued their law-talk. As they paced the corridors, Victoria smiled up at the older man. 

“You are both so kind, Mr. Collins, to come to my aid,” Victoria began.

“Nonsense, Miss Winters,” he growled, “You are in danger because of my family, and your service to us; I owe you a duty,”

“Most men would not recognize such a duty, Mr. Collins.” He had no answer.

On their next turn, he resumed the conversation. 

“Mr. Bradford seems—very—fond of you, Miss Winters.”

“And I of him,” she replied, tossing her head just a little. The older man smiled. He thought to himself, “How fine a dash of pride makes her look!”

“Then let us hope for a happy deliverance from your troubles, Miss Winters.”

His tone rather than his words led her to squeeze his arm, and he patter her hand. “Naomi would not recognize me,” he mocked himself in his thoughts, and they rejoined the younger men. 

As the day past, and the shadows began to deepen, Joshua was tired, but content. The matter was in hand, and the burden had passed on, at least in part. He would do his part, but seeing Barnabas take the laboring oar comforted him more than he could say. 

Barnabas suggested that Bradford join him for supper at the Old House, so that they could continue their planning. Peter agreed, and the Collins men bade Victoria farewell. They agreed to wait for Bradford in the anteroom to allow the young couple an opportunity to be alone for a few minutes. Hungry now, both father and son stood less patiently than was ideal, and turned as a door squeaked. But instead of the sandy-haired Bradford, it was the dark-avised and vaguely sinister Reverend Trask, who addressed Joshua first. 

"Is it true, what I have heard, Mr. Collins, that you have come to succor Miss Winters?"

"What business is that of yours, Sir?" Joshua rasped.

"Any man who aids a witch is likewise guilty of her sins, Mr. Collns," the saturnine cleric replied. "Surely you value your immortal soul more than you do a young woman's beauty?"

Before the flushed Joshua could reply, Barnabas put himself between the two men.

"You know Reverend," He began almost amiably, "I have learned from you."

"Have you, Mr. Collins?"

"Indeed. You have taught me that witches are real, and that a man may know a fact that is true, and yet miss the truth that matters most."

Trask tried to puzzle out the nature of Barnabas's remark. Sensing a gibe or an insult, he jeered: "The Collins family! So arrogant as to appoint themselves the Devil's advocates! It is a position that a Christian man would avoid at any price."

Barnabas coolly answered, "Not if justice required."

Trask stalked away from them, in high dudgeon. A different door opened, and Peter Bradford stepped through it.

As Bradford joined them, the three men walked through into the fading day, the red and orange of the setting sun transmuting the drab streets of Collinwood into an almost magical place lit by the fires of hope that refused to be quenched by the darkening shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 1796, legal education was done by pupillage or reading for the bar. Peter's hope for improving his lot in life and Barnanbas's need for an occupation place them on an equal footing in some ways, but Barnabas's social class and prestige give him an advantage in credibility and acceptance.


	6. Deliverance and Damnation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria comes to trial, Peter and Barnabas battle Trask, and the cards are played.

On a day dark and drear came to trial Victoria Winters. While she trusted her beloved Peter Bradford implicitly, and was confident in his legal acumen, the firm, kind tones of Barnabas Collins soothed her almost as much. His certainty that they would prevail, and the dogged, irritated scorn with which Joshua referred to her enemies comforted her. Joshua had come to remind her of another starchy, arrogant, Collins who had become very dear to her. Like the sorely missed Roger, Joshua Collins’s dyspeptic pose barely hid a heart as soft as thistledown once its defenses had been breached.

But now that the day of her trial was upon her, these past few days of comfort were unreal, and the smug satisfaction of the Rev. Orville Trask, as he laid out his case in his opening statement terrified the young woman. Victoria was not sure whether her increasing fear was the result of Trask’s clear conviction that victory would inevitably be his, or if it was the tightly reasoned chain of circumstances and incidents he persuasively weaved into a noose that would drop around Victoria’s own neck unless Peter—dear Peter!—and Barnabas could sever those threads.

When offered a chance to make his opening statement, Peter demurred, reserving his opportunity to speak to the opening of the defense case. The judge allowed it, but seemed ill at ease.

The first few witnesses held no surprises—several people from the coach she had purportedly arrived on, who denied her presence, farmers who described the specter of Jeremiah, with his horribly shattered, but still recognizable, face, Trask getting Abigail Collins to produce Victoria’s own clothing from 1967, and Victoria herself admitting that the Collins family history, published in the Twentieth Century, was in her possession at her time at Collinwood.

These witnesses had only raised an eerie atmosphere surrounding Victoria; they had not testified to any strange behavior or actual witchcraft by her. Having created a receptive atmosphere, Trask re-called Abigail Collins. 

The older woman acknowledged her dislike for Victoria, decried her strange and heathenish garb, and, stern-faced, deplored her brother’s sentimentality (as she called it, garnering one of the few laughs from the assembled spectators, and a bleak stare from Joshua) in hiring the clearly disturbed young woman now standing in the dock.

Trask moved on to his first big effect.

“Miss Collins, have you yourself seen witchcraft practiced under your brother’s roof?”

“I have, Reverend Trask.”

“Describe what you saw.”

“From the very first day of her arrival, I was suspicious. The woman was cold, calculating, and clearly despised us all as fools. So I was on my guard. And, even on that first day, I saw her practicing black magic under my very eyes.”

“At what, Miss Collins?” Trask asked, relishing the moment.

Why, at watching her use those tarot cards, with their pagan symbols, to tell the future.”

“Tarot cards?” Trask was understandably confused.

“Yes, the Countess had them out several times a day. She used them to scry whether her niece Josette would arrive at Collinsport in safety, and then for many other reasons.”

“The Countess?”

“The Countess du Prés, of course.”

“The Countess du Prés? But you are not saying that she was the witch, Miss Collins?”

“Well, of course I am, Reverend.”

The crowd stirred, and the Reverend’s composure was slightly ruffled.

“Why would you say that, Miss Collins? You were as sure that the witch was Miss Winters as am I!”

“My nephew Barnabas asked me a question, Reverend, and my answer shocked me.”

Perplexed, Trask persevered. “What was the question, Miss Collins?”

“Barnabas asked me what kind of woman the witch was, and if Miss Winters fit that description. I realized almost immediately that she did not. Miss Winters is straightforward, impulsive, a little flighty—but too confused at her situation to be the witch. The witch was calculating, manipulative, sly—that she was a thinker able to stay hidden in the shadows. The Countess was that kind of woman, able to eat and drink at our table while causing the series of calamities that has so hurt my family—Barnabas’s sickness, Sarah’s illness, Jeremiah’s strange infatuation with Mademoiselle Du Prés, Barnabas’s challenging Jeremiah to a duel, and killing him….”

She began to sob. Abigail knew she was the family joke (little Daniel had once called her “the family curse” to Millicent), and yet she mutely, awkwardly, loved them, loved them all. Stiff and competitive Joshua, frail Naomi, poor Jeremiah, Barnabas—her tears flowed for the sufferings of her family and her own inability to bring comfort.

The court stood in recess. 

Angelique, the only family member other than Barnabas not scheduled to testify, led her away and sat with Abigail in the Sheriff’s office. She took the older woman in her arms, and let her weep. At one level, Angelique could feel the old triumph at having worked her will over people, even without sorcery. But more deeply she felt the loneliness Abigail exuded, and tried to make a virtue of. She unwrapped the carefully made sandwiches she had made for Abigail, and comforted the spinster aunt. When she was more composed, Abigail ate, at first desultorily, but then with appetite. Angelique was attentive, and kind. Yes, it was useful to her to be kind, but she found herself trying to think of ways to introduce a little happiness to her new Aunt by marriage. 

It seemed no time at all before the call to order.

Reverend Trask, realizing that Abigail had deserted him, sensibly declined to ask any further questions. Barnabas rose.

“I have just a few questions for the witness, Your Honor, if I may.”

Granted leave, Barnabas took Abigail through a brisk but gentle viva voce; he asked her what motive the Countess du Prés could have had to cause Josette and Jeremiah to fall in love.

Abigail answered “The Countess was very explicit in her view that the engagement between Barnabas and her niece was a mésalliance for a du Prés. She even said that Jeremiah would have been a tolerable choice, where you were not, Barnabas.”

Barnabas was pleasantly surprised at his aunt’s acumen. “And the daily resortings to the tarot cards?”

Abigail replied firmly, “I believe that she was using the cards to check her progress on the various parts of her plans—to verify that her spells had made you and then Sarah sick, and had made Jeremiah and Josette lovers, that all her plans were progressing as she desired.”

Angelique restrained a smile. The old beldam was so close to the truth, she thought. Angelique had not needed such frail implements as those of the tarot, but she had her own methods of obtaining those very ends. Still, she had the basic concept aright. 

Having scored so well, Barnabas had one last goal. He dared to try it. He asked the broadest question he could. It was not clever, it was not artifice; it was a new faith in Aunt Abigail’s basic honesty. She would answer as she saw the truth. And, he hoped, the truth would set not just Victoria Winters, but all of them free.

“And what was Miss Winters’s role in all this?”

Abigail paused, formulating her answer. The judge looked at her with increasing concern. Then she found her voice.

“I was a fool with regard to Miss Winters. For the longest time I thought she was the witch, because the only way to believe her claims to innocence was nothing short of terrifying—I could not accept it.”

“Accept what?” the judge broke her pause.

“Accept that the witch—that the Countess—was so strong in the Dark Arts that she was able to not only alter the present but the future!”

Trask rose, hoping to stanch the bleeding. “The future?” he sneered.

“Yes, the future! Her strange apparel, so unlike any civilized garb. The strange book, purporting to date from the Twentieth Century, yet so accurate about our family history from our English origins up until the time of Jeremiah’s death—my brother read it through, and confirmed that it was all true to that point!”

“Is this true, Mr. Collins,: the judge interrupted.

“Do you require my oath?” Joshua rose, his bearing regal.

“Not on this point. Just an affirmation or denial.”

“I affirm it because it is true. “ Joshua sat down again.

Trask, still on his feet, interposed “Miss Collins, you believe that the Countess du Prés is so powerful that she could have conjured a book that does not yet exist?”

“Satan will be defeated at the end of times, Reverend Trask, but he is active now—why not in the Twentieth Century? What better way to blind us all than to bewilder us with our own future, and cast from that time to this a servant of the family as a stalking horse?”  
Trask began to pose another question. Before he could get it out, Barnabas rose, and gently coughed.

“Your Honor, the prosecution has had its opportunity to examine Miss Collins, and has finished. We are still in the course of my examination of her.”

“Indeed,” the Judge agreed, but then added, “Counsel, we should confer. This court is in recess.”

In the Judge’s chambers, Peter began to address the judge on the lack of any direct evidence of witchcraft on the part of Victoria. He used Abigail’s testimony to point out that Trask himself had not witnessed the alleged crimes of the witch, and that, if Abigail was not alone against her family, the whole case would come down to a conviction in absentia of a defendant who had not been charged.

Barnabas and Trask sparked off each other, the cleric refusing to reconsider his own conclusions, Barnabas pointing out that he was perfectly content to call the entire Collins family to corroborate Abigail’s account. He emphasized that Joshua and Naomi were prepared to take the oath and testify to their belief in Victoria’s admittedly incredible account—and how else to explain the book and the clothing?

“Witchcraft,” Trask replied, again and again.

“We agree there, Mr. Trask,” Barnabas answered, “but the evidence that will be called will establish that Miss Winters was as much a victim as I, or Sarah, or poor Jeremiah.”

At his wits’ end with this peculiar trial, the Judge fixed his eye on Trask, the instigator of the whole thing.

“With Miss Abigail Collins testifying as she has, have you any testimony to support the information against Miss Winters.”

“Let me examine her again,” Trask bellowed, “let me put her to the question, put her to her God!”

Barnabas and Peter rose in fury.

Disgusted, the Judge waved them to their seats. 

“No,” he said. “No, I will not let you cross-question a woman who is a pillar of respectability in this town in the hope that you can bully her into an error or a lapse of memory. No, I will not have the first family in Collinsport dragged before the people to confirm Miss Abigail’s wild tale, whether it is true or not. And do you know why, Reverend Trask?”  
“No, Your Honor,” the frustrated cleric sighed.

“Because you have no proof. Because the only testimony you have elicited, as Mr. Bradford so rightly says, has incriminated not the prisoner, but a woman who has not been charged and is no longer here to be charged. You have no case, Mr. Trask, and either you will drop the matter, apologize to Miss Winters, and return home to Salem, or you will pay the costs and fees of the Collins family and of the good people of Collinsport in having to house and feed the unfortunate Miss Winters. Which is it to be?”

Trask pondered. He stewed in his anger, and his hatred of Bradford, Barnabas, and everyone named Collins. Then he drew himself up and nodded. 

“I agree to drop the matter as regards Victoria Winters. I will apologize to her and acknowledge error. And, I assure you, I have no desire to stay here a moment longer than I must.”

They returned to the courtroom, and Trask withdrew and apologized with a good affectation of grace. He said that while he had proceeded in good faith, he was convinced by the testimony of his friend Abigail Collins that he had been deceived by the wiles of the Countess du Prés, and the strange circumstances that had surrounded the hapless Miss Winters.

The Judge dismissed the case, and emptied the courtroom as soon as he could. Before he did, he acknowledged the skillful advocacy of “young Mr. Bradford and young Mr. Collins,” and hoped that he would see them again, “in a less…convoluted matter.”

As the Collins family party, including Victoria and Peter, left the courthouse, Trask was seen discoursing to a small knot of supporters of the dangers of witchcraft among the higher orders of society. “That a countess could be a damned witch!” they heard him declaim as they passed by. 

“She will be damned,” Abigail mused.

“Him first,” Peter Bradford remarked to Barnabas Collins.


	7. The First Widow: Collinsport, 1807

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My name is Millicent Collins Forbes. The great house at Collinwood has known nothing but happiness in the past decade, or so people seem to believe. The Collins family, so proud, so powerful, the envy of every eye, so happy. But the strong oaken doors of the elegant, palatial home Joshua Collins built only ten years ago hide secrets, secrets such as broken hearts and cruel laughter. But this night, those doors will creak open, and impart their secrets to Barnabas Collins, plunging him, for the first time since the new house was built, into terror--terror that will leave no one at Collinwood untouched.

Patience was clucking at the skivvy, Angelique noted, smiling at the younger woman’s easy authority. 

“Ye don’t do it that way, gel,” Patience rolled her eyes at the silly chit’s misshapen excuse for a cake. “’tis Mr. Barnabas’s birthday tomorrow, and the cake must look like a cake, not a cairn wall.”

“I’m sorry, Cook,” young Wendy simpered, trying not to blub, “I tried, I really has.”

“Show me what you did, love, and we’ll figger it out.”

Angelique left Patience to her work, and withdrew to the nursery. She arrived just in time, as Bramwell, happily playing at being a bear, had growled a little too convincingly for little Sarah, who was crying, as her brother tried to soothe her.

“It’s just pretend, Sarah,” he endeavored to explain, “I’m not really a bear, just playing…”

But Sarah looked at her big brother skeptically, her golden ringlets cascading as she shook her head.

“Bear, Mamma, Bear!”

Angelique laughed, smiling at the children. 

“No, dear, not a bear. Just a boy. Why don’t we have tea in the drawing room today, won’t that be nice?”

“Tea?” Bramwell’s appetite, always ravenous, guaranteed that for him tea meant cake, of which he was inordinately fond.

Sarah, consoled now, clapped her hands, and stood precariously. “Tea!” she explained.

“And cake,” her brother concurred.

For Angelique, all was right with the world.

Her husband Barnabas, in his room at Collins & Bradford (Peter had insisted on the order of the names, laughingly remarking “I’m not too proud to profit on the Collins name if you aren’t!”), was less carefree. 

After a decade of partnership, the two men had grown their practice to a satisfying degree. Bradford’s careful draftsmanship and meticulous conning of the law books had given the firm a reputation for scholarship—indeed, his own book, "The Law of the District of Maine and How It Grew," was widely cited in the decisions of the courts within the District. But it was Barnabas who excelled in the courtroom, his meticulous building of a case, and his slashing cross-examinations providing a forensic spectacle that no other advocate in the District could rival. Barnabas Collins was, quite simply, a superb advocate. Nothing like as scholarly as his partner, but with the power to bring jurors and even judges with him, the two men complemented each other’s skills in a manner that each found thoroughly satisfying.

But Barnabas was far from satisfied this afternoon.

His old friend Nathan Forbes was becoming a damned nuisance, he reflected. 

“Barnabas,” the former Naval Officer demanded, “That money is mine, and you have no right to withhold it from me.”

“It is not your money, it is Millicent’s and I have every right to withhold it, Nathan,” Barnabas replied. “Neither my father nor I believe that your plan is feasible, and as Millicent’s trustees, our duty is to her.”

“Not to me?”

“Not at all to you. You want to use Collins money in Collinsport to compete with the Collins fleet, and you think me duty bound to subsidize you? The whole thing is absurd, Nathan.”

“Damn you, Barnabas, you and your father are using your positions as trustees to protect your own interests! You’re afraid my fleet will eat into your profits—and you’re right to, because I’m twice the sailor young Haskell is!”

“Nathan, I have no interest in my father’s business, and--”

“You’re his heir, aren’t you?”

Barnabas grasped at the edges of his temper. He should have fobbed Forbes off on Peter, he realized. Peter would have been better able to deal with him, without the family relationships to complicate matters, and to rub emotions raw. From his chair, he looked at up at Nathan, seeing him fresh, as if he were a stranger.

Forbes’s jowls had become slightly pendulous over the last decade, his bulk softer, and his eyes more greedy. The ersatz naval-style clothes he affected were tight on him, and his chin wobbled precariously over his collar. 

“Nathan,” he began again, “I have no interest in my father’s business, and I am not his sole heir. Even so, I would never allow for a disbursement as large as you are asking for what is clearly a pitiably doomed venture.”

“Oh, is it, Barnabas?”

“I know my father, Nathan; he will not tolerate competition out of Collinsport. Kittery, Augusta, even, he would tolerate, but from Collinsport, my father would be out to break you as he has all his other competitors.”

“I suppose you approve of that, eh, Barnabas?”

“I have no opinion on the matter at all, Nathan. My father adheres to the law, and that is my only frame of reference in commerce.”

“If I did move the business to Kittery, or even 'Salem’s Lot—would you support me then?”

“For a disbursement the size of what you are requesting? Mayhaps. I would need to see your business plan, and I would need Millicent to ratify it.”

“Millicent! She knows nothing of business!”

“I know, Nathan, but she is the beneficiary, not you.”

“Nonsense, Barnabas; in law, the husband and wife are one person—and that one is the husband!”

“Belike, but you were not married when she made this trust; Millicent remains an independent woman for its purposes.”

“But dammit, Barnabas, you have never done anything for me from the trust!”

“Not true,” Barnabas replied, his temper beginning to go. “I have paid off three of your mistresses and found homes for two of your bastards--”

“How dare you!” Forbes’s cry was loud enough that Barnabas swiftly rose from his chair. 

As Forbes began to hurl invective at his cousin-in-law, Peter Bradford’s door opened, and, striding into Barnabas’s room, the slender, sandy-haired lawyer tried to step between them.

“Now, Lieutenant,” Bradford began soothingly, only to be pushed by the bigger man into the wall, and one of Barnabas’s book-cases.

“Forbes!” Barnabas roared the name, grasping his walking stick by the ferrule, the upraised silver wolf-head handle gleaming in the gaslight.

Forbes looked at the two lawyers, closed his eyes for a moment, and shook his head. He walked over to Bradford, who was picking himself up.

“I apologize, Mr. Bradford,” Forbes said in his most mellifluous tone, “I was angry without cause, and had no right to push you.” He then gestured to include Barnabas in his apology.

“And you as well, Barnabas. My frustration boiled over. I will follow your advice, and consult Millicent this evening. Perhaps we can see you tomorrow, and wish you many happy returns of the day, as well as try to move forward in our business?”

Barnabas gave a taut little smile. “Of course,” he replied as pleasantly as he could manage. “I’ll be glad to see you in the afternoon.”

“Good day, gentlemen,” Nathan Forbes bowed, and swept from the room.

With his partner comfortably seated in the client chair, Barnabas poured him a sherry.

“I’m terribly sorry, Peter. I’ve never known Forbes to be violent before.”

Bradford smiled, a little wanly. “Hardly your fault, Barnabas. I worry for that wife of his, though.”

“Do you think he could be so little of a man as to abuse his wife?”

Peter’s look was grave. 

“I wouldn’t trust that man an inch, Barnabas. I remember he tried to force himself on Victoria by threatening to testify against her at her trial if she refused him.”

At his partner’s astonished face, Peter went on. “I thought that she must have told you. Clearly I was wrong.”

“I had no idea. That does make me worry about Millicent.”

“Aye,” Peter reflected, “ She’s a strange woman, but nice-natured, I think. I don’t know how patient he is with her, though.”

The partners returned to their labors, and as the hours passed, Barnabas began to muse about his cousin’s situation. He remembered a time when he would have trusted Forbes without hesitation, and then bethought himself of the man’s degeneration to the explosive bully in his chambers. As the roseate hues of the setting sun entered the window he decided to leave early, and stop by Collinwood on the way home. He should see the Forbes family at home, for Millicent’s sake.

Of course, it was not as simple as that. Naomi insisted on a glass of sherry being served to her son, and young Nehemiah, who had succeeded Ben Stokes when Joshua agreed that he should work for Barnabas, was always eager to hear tales of the law, so the time passed, and Barnabas’s initial sharp worry gave way to an almost complacent notion to forbear stopping in on Nathan and Millicent. Nonetheless, he mounted the stairs, and passed through the gallery. As he reached the elegant suite of rooms Nathan, Millicent, and Young Nathan occupied, he saw a door ajar, and gazed inside.

Nathan Forbes was slumped against the wall, a brandy bottle resting loosely in his hand. He appeared to be sleeping in the middle of a scene Barnabas could only describe as chaotic as he stepped further into the room. 

Millicent’s beloved Venetian glass vials, filled with a stunning array of perfumes, were scattered across the floor, mostly shattered, a few intact but oozing their contents into the floorboards. Her silver hand mirror lay on the floor, intact, but stove in on one side, as if it had been used as a hammer. Dresses were on the floor, and the closet door yawed precariously, attached as it was by only one hinge.

“My….God…” Barnabas breathed. His first thought was that the Forbeses had been the victim of a crime. And then he heard his old friend’s snoring give way to a hoarse laugh.

“Bar-Barnabas,” he greeted the lawyer, “Good news. Millicent has agreed to support the new business in ‘Salem’s Lot. Or Kittery. Whichever you like best.”

Barnabas Collins had never experienced the reality of “flesh creeping” before, not even during the worst of the witchcraft horror. He felt it now, and seeing Forbes’s knuckles bleeding, he knew why. 

“You had to persuade her, didn’t you, Nathan,” he asked, his voice dangerously gentle. 

“Dis-discipline, Barnabas. Like on a ship. Nothing more.” 

“I see. After she agreed, what happened?”

“Well, she ran out to have her little cry. You know Millicent. She needs the attention.”

It took all of Barnabas’s control to keep his tone non-judgmental, his voice quiet.

“Did she say where she was going to have her little cry?”

“Widow’s Hill. Where all the widows of the sailors go to drown themselves. Typical Millicent. She told me that that old fool Silas Clarney said that three Collins women would die there. Threw it in my face, Barnabas, the silly chit.”

Ten years at the bar had made Barnabas more solid than he had been in his youth. As he flew down the stairs, he called to Nehemiah, commanding him to send to the Old House for Ben Stokes. At his fastest pace, he ran toward Widow’s Hill. He ran up the Hill, a stich in his side slowing him. As the last rays of the Sun struck, he saw her.

Millicent’s eyes had been blacked, her face bruised, livid marks of strong fingers circling her pale, slender throat. Tears shone in those darkened eyes, and her voice was a rasp as she called out to him.

“Stay back!” She screamed.

“Millicent, it’s Barnabas!”

“I know. I know, Cousin Barnabas. You should have married me, and not the witch.”

An icy thrill of fear convulsed him. Before he could reply, she continued.

“We could have been happy, Cousin! You wouldn’t have betrayed me! You wouldn’t have beaten me, never, let alone now, when I’m carrying a child!”

“Come to me, Millicent, and we’ll discuss it all. I’ll protect you!”

“No! No pity! It’s dirty!” She advanced toward the cliff-edge.

He took a step forward.

She shrieked at him not to take another step. Then, almost conversationally:

“I am defiled. Defiled. His brat grows inside me. A hog, like his father. He’ll tear me apart as he comes out, just to hurt me. Oh, Barnabas, why couldn’t you have loved me?”

As he lunged toward her, she wailed in despair, shrinking from him—and threw herself off the cliff, down to the merciless rocks below.

Barnabas, overbalanced from his futile lunge, stumbled and fell, stretching his length on the ground, damp from the sea spray. When he had raised himself to his knees, he was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An extra long chapter for an extra long vigil in the USA. Comments and feedback appreciated.


	9. The Fall of the House of Forbes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Angelique Bouchard Collins. Through a surprising act of mercy, I have been given a second chance with the man I love. These past eleven years, the ghosts of Collinwood have slept, and my own evil deeds have been forgiven and perhaps even forgotten. But a new terror has arisen in the great house, one that threatens to tear open the scars that have healed so painstakingly and slowly. And this night, one man will try to end this nightmare before the horror can engulf the entire Collins family…

He leveraged himself to his feet. He could not have managed it without his wolf-head stick; even so, it was difficult. The pain from his fall and the despair at Millicent’s suicide had wiped all thought from his mind. He shambled, leaning on the stick still, to the edge of the cliff, and gazed downward. The clouds parted, as if to mock him, and the refulgent moonlight illuminated the rocks below.

Barnabas Collins let out a painful grunt as he scanned the macabre vista below. At last his keen eyes had found her. Splayed across a jagged crag, her blonde hair reflecting the moonlight, the shattered body of Millicent Forbes rebuked his failure. If only he hadn’t stopped to drink sherry with his parents! If only he hadn’t wasted time yarning about the courts with Nehemiah, who dreamed of someday leaving service and becoming a lawyer himself! 

But as it was, he had been too late by a matter of minutes. His delay had cost Millicent her life—but there was time enough, he realized as the adrenaline flooded his body and restored some perspective, there would be time enough to come to terms with his own responsibility for tonight’s tragedy. By any sane measure, Barnabas’s dilatory arrival was not the precipitant of Millicent’s death; that dubious honor belonged to another.

Forbes.

His onetime friend, his cousin’s husband, the charming former naval person who had romanced and won poor Millicent, and who had battered her, pregnant with his babe, to force her to prevail upon Barnabas to release funds from her trust for his use.

Forbes must face justice. He could not escape the consequences of his own actions, and, if Barnabas did not act swiftly, he might try to do just that. Buoyed by his urgent sense of duty, yes, and a frail, unsaintly desire for revenge, Barnabas Collins turned back toward his father’s home, and strode rapidly toward the home in which he had never slept.

As he neared the great house, Barnabas saw the familiar bulky form of Ben Stokes. With him was Angelique, to his dismay. His clever wife took in his dishevelment and mounting fury at a glance, and placed her hands on his wrists.

“What’s happened?”

“Millicent…she’s dead, Angelique.” 

He swiftly explained what had befallen. Angelique took it in equally swiftly, and with a calm she had evinced in former days.

“Find him, Barnabas,” she said urgently, “If he isn’t insensible with alcohol, who knows what he’s capable of?”

Nodding his agreement, and instructing Ben to follow, he entered the main house. His father was alone in his study, reading a large tome. 

He paused for just a moment.

“Father, it’s Millicent. She’s killed herself. Forbes beat her. Make sure that Mother stays safe. Ben and I will find him.”

Joshua nodded, and crossed to the drawing room, closing the doors behind him. Barnabas took the stairs quickly, the lumbering but powerful Stokes a little behind him. When he reached the Forbeses’ suite, he found all as he had left it, except that Nathan Forbes was gone.

As Barnabas gazed around the room, looking for any hint as to where Forbes might be.

“Mr. Barnabas,” Ben rasped, “Miss Millicent’s jewel case—it’s gone!”

Barnabas had represented too many accused of crime to not know what this meant—escape must be uppermost in Forbes’s mind. He ran down the corridor, and down the stairs. He heard Angelique’s silvery voice, instructing the servants to search the great house. 

“My father?” He asked.

“With Naomi and Aunt Abigail in the drawing room and the children.”

“All of the children?”

“Yes,” Angelique replied, “Even young Nathan. Nobody has told him—who should?” 

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “I trust your judgment, my love—I must run--”

“To the Old House,” she anticipated, and then his concern hit her.

“The children,” she whispered, suddenly ashen. “Oh, Barnabas—hurry!”

Barnabas siezed his Inverness cape, and donned it. He and Ben took the shortcut through the woods. They had cut through about a third of the way, when they encountered Patience, running toward Collinwood, blood tricking down her face from a nasty blow to her head. 

“Mr. Collins,” she wheezed, “the children. He’s takin’ them to Widow’s Hill. He’s gonna kill ‘em!”

“Go to the main house, Patience—the family is in the drawing room.”

Patience gazed into her employer’s eyes fiercely. “Get there quick, Mr. Collins. He took ‘em when the men from the big house came to check on us. He’ll be there soon, if he isn’t already!”

Barnabas and Stokes looked to each other.

“East, Mr. Barnabas,” 

A trace of a smile flitted across Barnabas’s features. “West, Ben,” he replied, as they used to when they were hunting on the estate. They separated, each taking his own path. 

The moon that had guided Barnabas now frustrated him; there was no way he could approach Forbes without being seen. As he approached the cliff once again, he heard Forbes telling a story to Bramwell and Sarah. The two children appeared unharmed, and, if Bramwell was a touch reserved, he did not appear to be afraid, at least. Sarah was laughing merrily. Forbes was stuffed into his old uniform, and carried his sword.

As he approached, Nathan hailed him, and added: “Look, children, your Papa has come to join us!”

“Good evening, children, Nathan.” He tried to match Forbes’s tone. They were all terrifyingly close to the edge. The straggling trees had almost entirely faded to a few gorse bushes and rocks, and then a painfully short span to the edge.

“Well, Barnabas,” Nathan said pleasantly enough, “How do we resolve the problem?”

“I’m open to suggestions, Nathan,” he answered.

“Are you? Good. I want my money. Millicent’s money. I’ll leave Collinsport, like I said I would.” Forbes’s tone darkened slightly.

“Do we have an agreement, Barnabas?”

“I have to consider the logistics,” Barnabas temporized. 

“Or you could go and leave me with your lovely children, and bring me the money. Then I’d leave you all in peace. After all, what law have I broken?”

Barnabas’s eyes flickered to the cliff edge. After Millicent’s suicide, and the damage the cliff and the rocks must have done to her, could he even prove that Forbes had beaten her at all? 

“I don’t know that you’ve broken any law, Nathan,” Barnabas conceded, “I just know that--”

Barnabas did not finish his sentence; Nathan suddenly grasped his throat, and struggled to breathe.

“Run!” Barnabas commanded the children. “Run to Collinwood, go to the drawing room, and do not go until I am there.”

Bramwell took Sarah’s hand, and they ran pell-mell toward the great house.

“Don’t kill him!” Barnabas entreated, “He needs to face justice! I need him to face justice!”

Forbes writhed for a few minutes, just long enough for Bramwell and Sarah to reach the main house, and then, gasping, began to breathe again. 

“You have to come with me, Nathan.”

“I really don’t, Barnabas. As you said, I’ve broken no law.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But you cannot just run.”

Forbes grinned. “Want a turn-up, do you Barnabas? You can’t stop me, you know. I’ve got my sword, and you just have that poncy little stick.” Now get out of my way, Barnabas.”

Seeing Barnabas still in his path, Forbes shook his head ruefully.

“Shame to end our friendship this way Barnabas, but you’ve no right to hold me, you know.” He drew his sword.

Barnabas twisted the silver wolf-head, and drew the sword from his stick, keeping the wooden scabbard as a second weapon. The two men circled each other, weapons drawn.

Forbes lunged at Barnabas, who parried the blow, while striking Forbes on the side of his head. Rattled, the former Navy man lunged again, this time for Barnabas’s torso. A swift whirl by Barnabas caught Forbes’s sword in Barnabas’s cloak, protecting him for the moment, but allowing Forbes the opportunity to smash Barnabas’s face with his fist. As the men struggled, a powerful pair of arms wrested Forbes away from Barnabas, and hurled him to the ground. 

Ben seized the fallen sword. He and Barnabas held the sailor at bay. Forbes pulled out a dagger, and, his eyes flitting from one combatant to the other, from Stokes to Barnabas and back again, until he saw the cordon of estate men drawing closer by the minute. Forbes backed away from them, nearing the cliff edge.

“Forbes!” Barnabas called out “throw down the dagger, man! If you haven’t broken the law, you’ll be set free!”

Forbes’s expression became a snarl.

“I’ll never be free now, Barnabas!” He backed away further, almost to the very edge, and then hurled the dagger at Barnabas, and turned around--

And for the second time that night, Widow’s Hill claimed a victim; this time, atypically, a sailor, seeking his wife in death.


	10. Diabolos: Collinsport, 1818

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My name is Bramwell Collins. At the urgent request of my younger sister Sarah, I have interrupted my studies at Harvard University, where I am enrolled in the new School of Law. My professors have allowed this break in my labors because of their respect for my father. And so I have returned to the Old House, the rambling mansion that my father and mother call home, to discover what terror strikes my mother ever more cruelly in each successive night.

“Mother, what are you not telling us?”

Sarah’s comment could have been more politely phrased, Bramwell thought, although he was almost amused at her prosecutorial tone. Any amusement faded, though, as he looked into Mother’s eyes, still luminous, but deeply shadowed. Her haunted look and the worry lines only recently graven in her still beautiful features disturbed him. Her denials were too glib, her reassurances rang hollow. Something was wrong, and Mother was too adept for him to pin her down. 

Sarah’s golden hair, straighter than Mother’s, but just as shiny, cascaded down her back. She twisted a lock around her index finger, a familiar sign to Bramwell that she was becoming frustrated. Mother would know that too, Bramwell was sure, and yet she continued to put Sarah off with platitudes. As Bramwell listened to the conversation going nowhere, he formed a resolution.

“It’s very sweet of you darlings to worry about me, but women, well, we change as we get older. It’s quite normal, darling,” she addressed this last remark to Sarah. Her fifteen year old daughter looked remarkably unconvinced, and glared at her mother. 

“Then I shall say nothing more!” She proclaimed, and swept off to her room.

“Bramwell, dear, won’t you talk to her? She’s making far too much of a trifle.”

“I will, if you tell me honestly that you are not ill, Mother.”

“Of course I’m not, sweetheart.”

Angelique’s normally dazzling smile seemed brittle. Giving up, Bramwell kissed his mother’s cheek.

“Then I’ll take Sarah for a walk, and have a good chat with her.”

His appropriation of one of his father’s stock phrases brought a smile, a real smile, to Angelique’s face.

“That’s my hero,” she bade him farewell as he pursued his sister. He caught up with her as she began to mount the stairs, and haltered her by taking her arm.

“I told Mother I would take you for a walk, and talk with you.”

“Of course you did! You’d always take her word over mine, Bramwell!--”

“Not this time, Sarah,” her brother replied, “Something is wrong. We are going to Collinsport.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not Mother who will tell us; it’s Father.”

Sarah’s eyes gleamed in agreement. They went to the stable yard, and Bramwell asked Mr. Stokes to put a cob in a chaise for them.

“Aye, I will,” the portly factotum agreed, smiling, “It’ll take a minute or two, Mr. Bramwell; why not get my Patience to make you up a lunch while I get Maple Leaf ready?”

“Thanks, Mr. Stokes,” Sarah answered, and brother and sister went along to the kitchen, where Mrs. Stokes, as slender as her husband was hefty, packed a nice picnic for them. 

When they returned to the yard, Maple Leaf was ready and they drove the “one hoss-shay” into Collinsport. They tied the cob up at the post nearest the building where Collins & Bradford were housed, and entered the chambers. As they walked to their father’s room, they heard his low tones mixed with the somewhat higher tones of a familiar family friend.

Entering without knocking, the young Collins siblings were confronted with their father and their “Aunt” Victoria Bradford. 

At forty-eight, Barnabas Collins was still striking. Heavier than he had been in youth, he was still pretty trim. His hair had only a few streaks of gray, admittedly giving him a more severe appearance than the merry “Papa” Bramwell remembered from his childhood. The lines in his father's visage reinforced the newly forbidding cast to his features. 

Aunt Victoria, by contrast, was still slim as Bramwell could ever remember her. Her beauty was still striking, though her luxuriant dark hair sported a long streak of white, which was oddly attractive. The years had been kind to her face and figure, and she had lost the apprehensive reflexes of being out of her own time and place. Her happy, although childless, marriage to Peter Bradford had made the Nineteenth Century her time and place.  
Aunt Victoria rose on seeing her godson and his sister, and she embraced them each. Barnabas, however remained seated, crooking an eyebrow upward.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visitation?”

“We need to speak with you Father,” Sarah attempted.

“Bursting into my chambers when I am engaged in a conversation that might be highly confidential, Bramwell? Surely you should know better, if you hope to make an advocate.”

Victoria’s tinkling laughter broke Barnabas’s assumed hauteur. He too laughed, and then asked them, “All right you two rascals, what is it?”

“It’s actually quite serious, sir,” Bramwell began.

“Should I leave you?” Aunt Victoria’s voice was kind. 

“N-no, please don’t, “ Sarah almost pleaded. “You might help.”

“Help with what?” 

“It’s Mother,” Sarah collected herself. “She says it’s nothing, that she’s fine, but I hear her. At night.”

“Hear her?” Barnabas was perplexed. “Your Mother and I share a bedroom. Surely I would hear her more clearly than you could, Sarah.”

“She walks the gallery, Father, right past my room. She doesn’t scream, she just—moans. Cries. Pleads.”

Barnabas was leaning forward in his chair.

“What do you mean by ‘pleads?’” he asked.

“I hear her cry ‘no, don’t’ and ask for mercy.”

Barnabas and Victoria paled.

“Who does she ask for mercy, Sarah?”

“It’s a strange name, one I’ve never heard before. Dia-Diabolos.”

The lawyer leaned back in his chair, a sheen of perspiration bedewing his forehead. 

“Can you tell me anything else, Sarah?”

“No, Papa. Just that she’s frightened. And Mother is never frightened by anything!”

“What do you have to say, Bramwell?” 

“Sarah wrote me at Harvard, Father, and asked me to come. I didn’t know what it was about until I got here, but when I spoke to Mother, I could tell that she—well, that she was lying to me, Father.”

Barnabas rose from the chair, and came around from behind his desk. He placed his hands on his son’s shoulders, and then embraced Sarah. He took a pace back from then, and met their eyes. Calmly, coolly, Barnabas said:

“Your mother would never hide anything from you—or from me—unless she thought it was for your good, or mine. She loves us all very much, you see. But she’s wrong to hide anything from me that makes her afraid.”

He looked from his son to his daughter, and smiled at them.

“You both did right to come to me, and, Bramwell, I’m very grateful to you for coming all the way from Cambridge. I will have a good chat with your mother tonight. Do not worry. There is nothing we cannot solve, as long as we are all together.”

Brother and sister met each others’ eyes. Papa’s reassurance was potent. Sarah had never known an occasion when he had not protected her. Bramwell, six years older, was aware that the world posed threats that were beyond his father’s control (“the scary navy man at the cliff “ flashed through his mind), but even with that memory, Bramwell had seen his father send him and Sarah to safety, had known Father protected them. Bramwell nodded, reassured.

“Go back to the Estate, my dears. Why not visit your Granpdapa and stay for supper? He turns eighty soon, and will be glad to see you.”

They nodded, and, embracing and kissing Aunt Victoria, departed.

Barnabas resumed his seat.

“Would you like a sherry, Barnabas?”

“I should be offering you one, Victoria.”

“Don’t be silly. Keeping up that front hurt, Barnabas Collins, and you need a little care to go face your wife.” Victoria moved gracefully to the sideboard, and poured two sherries. Handing one to Barnabas, she resumed her seat.

“Diabolos, Barnabas?” Victoria asked her old friend. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

After a long pause, Barnabas essayed a response: “It’s Greek, Victoria. My father made sure I had a Classical education. It means ‘devil.’”

Victoria blanched.

“What do you think it means, Barnabas?”

“I think it means…” He trailed off.

In her governess voice, Victoria pressed him: “You think it means what, Barnabas?”

“That our past has caught up with us, my friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the last part of the 18th-19th Century arc. Afterward, we return to 1967.


	11. Fatality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Ben Stokes. The Old House was once bedeviled by a witch. A beautiful witch, scheming and clever, who cruelly hurt anybody who stood in her way. And then, one day, it all changed. The witch found herself loved, and her husband forgave her everything. Since those days, this house has been a safe and happy home. But in me bones, I feel fear again, like I haven’t in more’n 20 years. Everything ends, Mr. Barnabas used ta say when we read about the fall of the Roman Empire in those big books by Mr. Edward Gibbon that he taught me my letters from. Tonight, I’m afraid of what might be coming for all of us at the Old House. Something is coming to an end…”

With the children (although that description hardly fit them anymore) safely out of the way, Barnabas left his chambers. He crossed the street, and entered the church, where he knelt in prayer. Then he made his preparations, and returned to the gig. He remounted and drove the gig back to the Old House as the Sun began to set. As the gloom overpowered the waning light, he left the equipage and horse to Ben, who noticed his old friend’s tight expression.

“What is it, Mr. Barnabas?”

The barrister’s face softened a little at his friend’s loyalty. 

“Stay with Patience in the kitchens tonight, Ben, until I come for you.”

“If there’s danger, Mr. Barnabas, my place be with you.”

“Not tonight, Ben. If there is danger, I’ll want your help badly. But I need to find out what is happening before we can act.

As he turned, Barnabas was halted by Ben’s voice.

“I hated her once, Mr. Barnabas—Miss Angelique, I mean. When she was hurtin’ you and the family.”

Barnabas turned back, his eyes meeting Ben’s. Before he could speak, Ben continued:

“But when you accepted her, and loved her, she changed. I ain’t hated her for years, Mr. Barnabas; she’s been good to my Patience, and I’m grateful to her now.”

Barnabas’s eyes met Ben’s, silently asking him the question he couldn’t put into words.

“I’ll help you and her anyway I can, Mr. Barnabas. You can count on me. And Patience, if need be.”

Barnabas’s eyes misted. He walked back to Ben, put a hand on his shoulder, and said softly, but intently:

“I’ve never doubted you, Ben, and I never will.” He could say no more, but gently squeezed Ben’s shoulder, and paced to the house, as carefully as he had when he stepped away from Jeremiah on the dueling ground. He opened the door, and began to ascend the stairs. 

The second floor was in darkness. Barnabas had removed his cloak, but still carried the wolf’s-head cane. If the word “Diabolos” meant what his translation led him to believe it did, the odds were that no earthly weapon would avail him this night, but the stick, and even more, the hidden blade gave him some little comfort. It had kept him alive when Nathan tried to murder him all those years ago, giving Angelique her opportunity to protect him, and to allow him to try to bring Nathan to justice.

He reached their common bedroom, and, as he gently swung the door open, Barnabas saw a dim, smoldering light, a light not from the fire, candles or gas, but light that was ambient, from no identifiable source. Angelique, prone upon the bed, was writhing, struggling to move. Looming over her, a dark figure, one seemingly clothed as a gentleman, but whose face and hands were shadowed—no, Barnabas realized, not shadowed—shadows. Only the metallic glimmering eyes in that absence where a face should be seemed alive.

“Get…get out, Barnabas,” Angelique managed to gasp, with what was obviously great difficulty.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” He stepped further into the room. 

The laughter that rippled back at him was cruel, and cold. He never knew whether it was comprised of actual sound, or if it was only in his mind that he “heard” it. With that laugh, a terrible reek, of brimstone, of unhallowed things, of death, suffused the room.

He bent down to Angelique.

“Are you bound? I see no ropes.”

The voice that had laughed spoke. Its sound resonated in his mind, discordant, malicious, somehow…greasy... in his psyche.

“You know who I am, Barnabas Collins,” the voice enunciated, “your schoolboy Greek did not lead you astray. I have come to claim my own.”

“I am not yours, Diabolos!” Angelique shrieked rather than spoke.

“Let her go, damn you!” Barnabas swore.

“I? I have every right to her, Collins. She won you through my power. Power that she borrowed from me. Now she refuses to pay her debt. Would you let yourself be cheated so”—but the voice had changed, and was Nathan Forbes’s voice, insouciant, teasing as it had been in life. 

“I never swore to you as you bade me to, Diabolos! My soul remains my own!”

“But you have benefitted from my power, Angelique,” Diabolos replied, in Millicent Collins’s voice, “You took the fruit of my power, and refuse to accept the consequences.” Angelique squirmed on the bed, clearly trying—and failing—to speak.

“She did not win me by your power, devil!” Barnabas heard himself roar. “She won me because I saw her!”

“Saw her?” Millicent’s voice had never been sly, or cruel, and yet it was both, now. 

Barnabas found himself suddenly calm, almost serene. He met the cold, gunmetal eyes with his own.

“I saw her afraid that I would kill her. Not because she was afraid of death, but because my killing her would be the ultimate rejection of her love for me. And I simply could not do it to her. I had to—”

The voice broke in again, in Victoria Bradford’s sensible, matter-of-fact tones.

“You had to take the exit ramp.”

“Yes. You know, then, that your claim is false, Father of Lies!”

The shadowy figure somehow flowed like a wave to engulf Angelique’s helpless form.

Barnabas drew the sword from his cane. At first, Diabolos laughed contemptuously, but the laughter stopped as the thin blade glowed, a bright blue blaze illuminating the entire room.

Diabolos twisted away from the radiance, whirling in circles until he cowered in the far corner of the room.

“Holy water, Mr. Collins?” He hissed in own voice. “Superstitious, are we?”

Barnabas smiled grimly. “And yet, you are suddenly almost out of my house.” He took a step toward the cloaked figure. 

“Be careful, Barnabas?” Angelique was on her feet and at his side. 

“Yesss, Barnabasss, be careful…” The voice was breaking down into a serpentine sibilance.

The glow of the blade spread, filling the room, bright as a new day, a wholesome scent like clover or new-mown hay driving out the reek of Diabolos.

“Angelique,” the Father of Lies spake, “You are not mine. Barnabassss Collinsss hasss made that clear. You are free of me and mine. But you have no powerssss. No protection. None. And you will ssssee the cossst sssoon….”

The figure was gone.

The light from the blade began to dim.

They had won.

***

By the time Barnabas had lit the lamps and the candles, he was trembling. Angelique took him in her arms, and they found comfort—and joy--together. Afterward, Barnabas explained that Sarah and Bramwell were at Collinwood, and he purposed to go get them. Angelique insisted on accompanying him, and, after alerting Ben and Patience that all was well, they began to cross the lawn sward toward the great house. Arm-in-arm, they each told the other their stories, pausing to kiss under the full moon.

Barnabas stepped away from her, and dropped to one knee. He began to recite to her his favorite from Wordsworth’s new volumes of Poems:

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,  
The holy time is quiet as a Nun  
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun  
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;  
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:  
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,  
And doth with his eternal motion make  
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.  
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,  
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,  
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:  
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;  
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,  
God being with thee when we know it not.”

Angelique tried several times to interrupt, but Barnabas would have none of it, cocking an eyebrow, and piling on the histrionics. Finally, he rose, took her into his arms, and kissed her with all the passion of their youth. She responded just as passionately, as lovingly. 

The six months that followed were a season of bliss. Their love rekindled to its youthful heights by the shared experience of danger, the peace in the family, the joyful return of Barnabas’s sister Sarah from her Grand Tour of Europe; all these together made Winter and Spring alike joyous. 

Joshua’s eightieth birthday was, despite the old man’s wishes for a quiet celebration, a grand event. The last remaining Collins to have taken part in the Revolution, a friend to Hamilton and Jay, the leading man of Collinsport, Joshua could not spurn the community’s need to wish him well. Despite his dour comments in the days leading up to the party, Joshua was secretly flattered by the attention. 

Never an easy man, his old age had brought him grandchildren and friendship with his children, and young Daniel (now clerking at the shipyard). Young Nathan Forbes had left Collinwood upon coming of age, but he sent an affectionate letter to the old man, and regretted his inability to be present.

The party was everything Naomi had hoped it would be. In the years since terror had left the halls of Collinwood, Naomi had flourished, drinking far less wine, and more barley-water. Tonight was her success as much as it was Joshua’s apotheosis from crusty old businessman to beloved patriarch.

The speeches were affectionate, with Peter Bradford and Barnabas excelling as they painted a humorous picture of Joshua “shoving them into partnership” and secretly steering business to them, even as he grimly predicted their failure from week to week. 

Sarah Collins and her husband Daniel were expecting their first child, and threatened to name him Joshua, which the old man deplored. “Give the lad a name that won’t make such a grisly bear of him,” he entreated. But the young couple just laughed at him, and flirted outrageously with each other.

As the evening turned into the late hours, Barnabas and Angelique grew fatigued, and took a turn around the assembled guests, saying their goodnights. Angelique kissed her father-in-law and mother-in-law affectionately, without constraint. 

Barnabas and Angelique began to amble their way home to the Old House, Angelique leaning a bit on her husband. They kissed once more on the lawn, and resumed their walk, when Angelique suddenly screamed and fell to the grass. Barnabas was kneeling beside her in an instant.

“What’s wrong, my love?” he asked urgently.

“My hip…my leg. Oh, Barnabas, it hurts so much…” He wrapped her in his cloak, and gathered her in his arms. Despite the hour and his age, Barnabas carried her to the Old House, and placed her on the divan in the front parlor. Angelique moaned, the agony straining her face. 

Barnabas bellowed for Wendy, who came running. Seeing her mistress in such pain, the young woman paled. 

“Run down to the great house,” Barnabas commanded, “and bring Doctor Hall back with you. Inform him that it is an emergency, and if he does not wish to come, inform Ben, and tell him from me that he must bring the Doctor back with him immediately.”

Trained by the inimitable Patience, Wendy nodded her understanding, and flew out the door and toward the great house. Barnabas sat with his wife, making her drink some brandy. 

In a faint flicker of mischief, Angelique teased “You’re trying to get me drunk, Barnabas Collins…you needn’t you know.”

“It’s for the pain, love,” He explained.

“I love you even more sober than I do drunk, Barnabas…kiss me.”

He did.

Doctor Hall arrived, sober, Barnabas noted thankfully, with Wendy and Daniel in tow. 

“Doctor said he might need help moving her,” Daniel said, “Ben is on his way.”

“Do the old people know, Daniel?” Angelique hated the notion that Joshua’s party would be marred for any reason.”

“No,” he replied quickly, Ben was sure you and Cousin Barnabas would want everything to go on as if you were fine. “

“Thank you, Daniel,” Angelique murmured, as Doctor Hall shooed them all out of the parlor, except Wendy. 

As they waited, Barnabas’s anxiety grew. The arrival of Victoria and Peter Bradford gave Barnabas a simulacrum of normalcy; his partner and he had faced many difficulties over the years, and just his presence was reassuring. Likewise, Victoria’s stalwart faith in Barnabas and Angelique was a comfort. After a seeming eternity, Doctor Hall entered the drawing room. 

“Mr. Collins, do you want to speak in private?”

“These are my closest friends, and Angelique’s. Tell us.”

“She’s in very bad shape. Cancer. It’s eaten away her entire hip joint, and it just shattered tonight.”

Barnabas shuddered, the room seeming to sway. 

“What can be done?” He asked in a sepulchral voice.

“We have to get the leg off. It’s only attached by the tendons and muscles. It will decay, and that will spread toxins throughout her entire body. Even so, if the cancer is anywhere else in her system, she will die. We just cannot be sure.”

“What do we do?” Barnabas asked in shock.

“We deal with the leg, and administer dock root, possibly a fig poultice, and perhaps hog’s lard and dough.”

“Will that help her?”

“It’s what there is, Mr. Collins.”

The operation had to be done at once, Doctor Hall explained, and Angelique could not be moved from the parlor. 

“Have you explained it to her?” Barnabas’s voice was dull rasp.

“Yes,” he answered. “She’s willing to try it. I must warn you, she might die in the operation.”

“May I be present?”

“No, Mr. Collins. I need the fewest number of people possible in the room. Wendy will assist me…”

“Nonsense. I will be with her!”

The Doctor nodded heavily. “Do as I tell you without question, Mr. Collins. Any hesitancy could mean the difference between life and death.”

The operation, once it began, was agony. Barnabas Collins had never seen anything like it. Angelique’s blood everywhere, Her teeth biting a padded stick, her torso bound to the table brought in from the kitchen to stop her flailing in mid-operation, and the wails that escaped her, despite her courage, nearly broke him. If there was a hell, Barnabas knew what it would be for him, a perpetuation of this crawling, unending time of misery during which his beloved suffered in the hope of winning her bare survival. 

At long last, Angelique subsided into unconsciousness, and the Doctor worked swiftly and efficiently. Finally, it was done, and Angelique was swaddled in bandages where the shattered part of her pelvis had been.

“She’ll sleep for a while. Have Daniel and Ben bring her up to bed.” And the Doctor peered intently at him, adding “And get some sleep. You’re no good to her if you don’t.”

Wearily, Barnabas nodded. After Angelique had been brought up to their bedroom, and carefully placed in the bed, wrapped in bed-clothes, Barnabas dragged the old camp-bed his father had abandoned in the hurried move to Collinwood. He positioned it at the foot of the bed, and slept almost as soon as he lay down.

When he awoke, he shook himself and rose. Angelique’s face was beautiful as in youth, a small smile curving her lips. Love for her welled up in his heart, a hope that their happiness could be restored, even if she was to be unable to walk. For a few moments, his mind built castles-in-the-air. But Barnabas Collins was nothing if not a pragmatist, and he soon realized that she was not breathing. When he lay a gentle hand on her face, and then on her chest, she was cool to the touch.

She was gone, with the look of one to whom death had come as a mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cancer treatments in the early 19th Century are sourced from Shannon Selin, with thanks: https://shannonselin.com/2017/08/cancer-treatment-19th-century/


	12. The Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Sarah Collins. The death of my sister-in-law Angelique has brought a profound and gloomy silence to the Old House. My namesake and goddaughter has moved to the Great House with her husband Daniel, and my nephew Bramwell is pursuing his studies. My bereaved brother Barnabas, my oldest friend in the world, has grown weary and silent. His grief appears to have eaten up much of the best of him. I fear for him, he is so quiet and reclusive. My brother walks through the corridors of the Old House, like a revenant, haunting himself. And wherever he walks, he walks alone.”

The Old House in mourning.

The Great House in sorrow.

Barnabas Collins had been so much the cynosure of his parents that his sudden absence left them stricken. Four months after the death of his beloved wife, Barnabas had grown gaunt and grim. His sister Sarah had tried to tease him about his loss of weight, hoping to provoke a spark of their old banter, but he had not even recognized the attempt at humor.

Peter Bradford had been forced to appear in court on a case that called for Barnabas’s talents with a jury, and had lost. He and Victoria were perturbed for not just the health of the firm, but far more so for their friend. The flamboyant, mercurial advocate was now dragging himself from hour to hour, with no emotion but a barely veiled distaste to be seen.

Joshua was near despair for his son and heir. Finally, at his wits end, he begged Naomi to try to stir something, anything, in their son. And so, in the enveloping twilight, Naomi returned to the house where she had borne her son, and asked Patience to find him for her.

“The Master is at her grave, Mrs. Collins,” Patience replied. Worry lines had etched themselves into the face of the younger woman. Her adoration of her late mistress reinforced her devotion to her employer, strong enough already after the years of mutual kindnesses she had shared with both Barnabas and Angelique.

Naomi, aware of her age and the distance to the graveyard, elected to wait at the Old House for her her eldest to return. She drank two cups of tea, and had ordered barley-water from Wendy when Barnabas came into the house, quietly hung up his cloak, and joined his mother in the parlor. He greeted her with only a kiss.The man whose words had been so often and successfully strewed about the law courts now husbanded them like a miser.

Naomi disconsolately looked at her son, trying to think of anything she could say to him. Barnabas’s eyes, still observant, took in her dejection. The kindness that had always been prominent in his makeup broke through his apathy. Broken-hearted though he was, Barnabas knew his father was old and his mother often lonely. He made an effort.

“I had more than twenty years with her, Mother. I know many men who are less blessed than I was. But I don’t know how to stop mourning, you see. I keep hoping to waken, and see her there. I never do. Not even a ghost.” 

Naomi replied, “Does not that mean she is at peace, Barnabas?”

“I don’t want her at peace, Mother, I want her with me.”

“Truly?”

Barnabas remembered the horrors of his mid-twenties.

“No,” he admitted unwillingly, “I would not take that from her. I only wish I could share it with her.”

“Oh, Barnabas,” his mother side, “trust an old woman, with an even older husband. You will have that peace sooner than you think. Life only seems long.”

Barnabas’s smile was melancholy and fleeting, but it warmed Naomi to glimpse it.

“I miss her, Mother,” he admitted, “I miss her, and I don’t know how to cease from missing her.”

“Good,” Naomi declared.

“Good?” Barnabas’s voice rose in outrage.

“Yes, good. You miss her because you love her.”

“Loved her, you mean,” the reply was gloomy.

“No, love her, Barnabas—you love her, and that’s how it should be. D’you think I don’t miss my parents? Or that Joshua does not miss his first wife? We love even those who are gone, Barnabas, and always will love them. Just as you will always love Angelique, even if you find someone else to love one day.”

Eyes stinging, Barnabas lowered his head, striving not to weep in front of his mother. The old lady stood, and held him against her, and, at last, the tears flowed freely.

He walked her home to the Great House, and, at his father’s request, stayed to sup with them. Surrounded by so many of those he loved—his parents, Daniel, his sister Sarah, and his own daughter, even Peter and Victoria Bradford, summoned by the canny old patriarch at short notice, Barnabas found himself slowly thawing from the frozen rigors of grief. Peter made him laugh at a tale of smuggled French lace, and how he had won on appeal because the lace turned out to be good old American lace. 

Sarah and Daniel had happy news to share, that Barnabas would soon have a new generation of Collinses to fuss over and try to make lawyers of. Joshua’s stiff demeanor had loosened as he aged, and his warmth to his son was notable. Victoria slyly remarked to Barnabas between courses that the old man was radiating approval of the family gathered around him, and was positively genial that evening.

“Clearly, there must be a catch somewhere,” the former governess laughed.

“I know, it’s very Charles Brockden Brown,” Barnabas smiled, “the brief light interlude before the curse descends.”

Even Joshua joined in the laughter, adding with typical acidity, “Such arrant rubbish ‘Wieland’ was, a predictably dreary scare after every moment of happiness!”

As his path back to the Old House wound through the trees, Barnabas felt lighter in heart. He doubted that he could ever love again after so many years with his incomparable, beloved Angelique, but, he thought, perhaps it was time for him to take his place again at the firm, as well as at the family board. He was not the man he had been, but he still had his duties. A man could do worse than to live for duty.

After he entered the Old House, and hung up his cloak, Barnabas felt impelled to enter the parlor. The moon’s beams illuminated the room enough that he could discern that he stood now in the very spot where he had stood when he thought to kill Angelique. He shuddered at the memory, and longed for her once more. He decided to mount the stairs and sleep. 

Some instinct made him turn, standing exactly where Angelique had stood as he pointed the pistol at her. In the pale light, a winged object swooped through the window—but the window was closed, he realized, a throb of panic shocking his heart.

The bat glided toward him, a small beast, but somehow redolent of brimstone. Still rooted to the very spot where he had he held his wife at bay, he could not move. The creature flew toward him, and battened on his throat. Desperately trying to cast it away from him, he felt tiny incisors ripping into flesh, and then both heard and felt the sucking of blood into the animal’s mouth.

He screamed, then, screamed with a terror he could not put into words. Some rational part of him thought it knew that a small animal, however winged, could not cause him harm. But in the fibers of his being, he knew that his very soul was imperiled. As he collapsed to the floor, he shrieked once more. Heavy footsteps approached—Ben, no doubt—

As he lost consciousness, a presence in his mind, foul, greasy, inhuman, and cruel, whispered to him, in his late wife’s soft tones, “You denied me my claim to her whom I coveted. You shall bear her punishment, Barnabas Collins. I curse you in her stead. You will walk the night for all eternity, alone forever; you will be neither dead nor alive. You will dwell only in darkness as the undead.”

With a final shred of consciousness, he called on the name of his lost love. Then all was gone, save for the blackness of the void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was the first American “gothic” novelist and influenced the Godwin-Shelley circle that produced Polidori’s “The Vampyr” (1819) and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” (1818). He was sufficiently respected that his gothic novels were published in combined editions with those of Friedrich Schiller and Mary Shelley.


	13. The Undead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Abigail Collins. I have never wept as I did this morning, as we buried my poor, dear nephew Barnabas. He may not have been as good a Christian as I would have hoped, but his kindness, his decency, surely, they must count for something with the Lord. Reverend Trask once set me against my family, and it was Barnabas who opened my eyes. I am afraid now to open them in the gloom of night. Since his death, two weeks ago, I have had strange tormenting dreams, and I fear that a new era of horror descends upon us at Collinwood.”

The funeral for Barnabas Collins was delayed for a fortnight, during which he lay in repose in the ice-house in the cellar of the Old House. The weather had become chill, as Autumn wiped away the memories of summer. 

Abigail Collins had been bedridden for months, but her determination to attend the obsequies for her late nephew was fierce. She was carried downstairs, shrouded in a thick cloak, and situated in a wheeled chair. Hunched over, white haired, the old lady was pushed by her great-nephew Bramwell, who took care of her with notable tenderness. When she wept, he gave her a handkerchief, when she stirred in pain, he adjusted the placement of the chair. At the end, as all of the Collinses and their friends threw clods of earth on Barnabas’s coffin, Bramwell gave Aunt Abigail a single red rose, and she tossed it into the grave. 

The funeral tea was at first a miserable event. The unexpected and sudden nature of Barnabas’s death shocked the entire family, as well as their friends. Victoria Bradford and her husband looked older than their ages. 

Joshua sought to slake his grief by turning to Naomi, who had seen Barnabas last. The couple, so often at odds in their younger days, each leaned on the other, boughs battered by many storms that had gradually intertwined, upholding their unwontedly frail frames.

The mourners passed tepid gossip—how statehood would affect Maine, and who would replace the late Judge Curtis, how old Barlow’s brindle cow had been found dead, inexplicably drained of all blood. From those further out, of Collinsport came tales of a strange blight in the cornfields outside of 'Salem's Lot.

Bramwell remained at Aunt Abigail’s side, listening to her stories of his father, man and boy. She told him of adventures he had shared with Jeremiah, his learning the law, and, most of all, of his opening her eyes to the harm Reverend Trask had inflicted on their family. 

She gave way, after a long interval, and Peter Bradford took up the tale, describing Barnabas’s courtroom theatrics, his sly, clever cross-examinations, innocents released from the fear of the gallows through his labors. 

“What will become of the firm now that he is gone?” Joshua asked.

Peter’s smile was sad. “My young colleague--over there, attending his aunt--will be my partner come the end of his articles. He’s already left off clerking, and done quite well in several cases. I’ll stay on for a few months to help him find a suitable partner, but I have been offered a commission as a judge.”

“Have you, by heaven?” Joshua’s interest stirred a bit. He had long admired the balance between his son and Bradford, how the scholarship of the latter had offset the intuitive, sometimes histrionic, style of Barnabas.

“Peter is being too modest, Mr. Collins,” Victoria broke in. “He’s to be Chief Justice of the State.”

“Well done, Bradford,” Joshua warmly shook the hand of his son’s closest friend. The mourners buzzed a little at this news, speculating as to who would, who could, replace Peter at Collins and Bradford. 

Tea was served, hospitality observed, and fond reminiscences of Barnabas and Angelique shared. As the afternoon drew on to evening, the older folk wanted to retire to their chambers to mourn in their own way, and the younger generation to leave the sadness of death behind, lest it poison their own hopes and aspirations. Bramwell helped Abigail to her room, and into her bed, and rang the bell for her maid Wendy to attend her. He kissed the old lady goodnight, and was surprised at the strength of her embrace.

“You father would be so proud of you, he would, Bramwell! Don’t you ever forget it!”

For the first time that day, Bramwell’s carefully maintained formal manner dropped, and he wept, holding his great-aunt as she embraced him.

“How can I measure up to him, Auntie?”

“You will, dear, you will. We all believe that, Bramwell. Even if Joshua don’t dare admit it for fear of tempting fate.”

“Is that why he’s so close mouthed?”

Abigail laughed, a short bark of a sound. “Aye,” she answered. “But he loves you, and your sister, and you being so fine a young man gives him hope. He just won’t admit it, lest it spoil you.”

With one last kiss, and an affectionate smile (so like his father at that age! Abigail thought), Bramwell left his great aunt to her memories, and then, shortly, to her dreams.

Wild dreams they were, too, she remembered, when she awoke in the morning. She had dreamed so vividly of her late nephew, of his strong features, his own bark of a laugh, so like her own, and of his gleaming white teeth, the moonlight glinting off his surprisingly long canines. He had been eager for all the gossip, and preened with satisfaction at Bradford’s rise to the judiciary and Bramwell’s new role in the firm. 

“Tell Bramwell to look at young Abraham Stokes. He’s served his articles with old Hoffman in Portland, and reminds me quite a bit of Peter—lots of scholarship, a great need to prove himself. He could fare farther and do worse. And old Ben would be delighted, of course.”

So like Barnabas, the old lady thought, looking out for others. And then she remembered his chill kiss on her forehead, and his regretful look as he stepped back toward the window and was then lost to her vision in the mist and moonlight.

She would tell Bramwell, of course. Some deep, atavistic instinct made her realize that she must tell him. Although Barnabas was dead (she knew that!), she did not like the notion of leaving that message unspoken, even if it were only a dream.

Anxious for reasons she could not articulate, Abigail rang for her maid.

***  
Bramwell Collins was not a fanciful young man. Aunt Abigail’s message—presented by her as having come to her from his father in a dream—was an idea he could only describe as superb, but he fretted at the dream for reasons he could not fathom. Abigail was visibly relieved to have delivered it, and faithfully have described her dream.

Taken purely as a dream, of course, it could not be anything more than a fond aunt’s recollection of her deceased nephew. But Abigail could not have, simply could not have, known of the suitability of Abe Stokes to assume Peter Bradford’s role in Chambers! The thing was impossible! Moreover, the words she described Father as having used were so redolent of Barnabas within his family!

He hated to bother either of the old folks about this. He could have gone to Aunt Sarah, or Aunt Victoria, but he feared what he would be told. He knew—as who at Collinsport, let alone Collinwood, did not?—of Father’s triumph against Reverend Trask, and of the exoneration of Victoria Winters (as she then was) from the charges of witchcraft. The case was family legend, and, in a way, the birth of Collins & Bradford. 

But his mind kept turning to his grandfather, to old Joshua. Frailer than he had been at his 80th birthday party, the old man was nonetheless firmly in possession of all his faculties. His skeptical nature, and his close involvement in the witchcraft trial were Bramwell’s best chance of obtaining an opinion neither too skeptical nor too fanciful. Despite his certainty that this avenue of inquiry was his best, his heart misgave him at further burdening the aging patriarch.

Nonetheless, as the afternoon sunbeams refracted in the stained glass windows, Bramwell strode into Grandfather’s study, poured two snifters of brandy, placing one in front of Joshua, and the other at the edge of the desk near the seat he took.

His grandfather’s only response was to raise an interrogatory eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” the young man began.

A wintry smile creased Joshua’s face.

“What’s happened, boy? What have you done?”

“Nothing, sir,” Bramwell replied, “but something…something odd has happened, and I’m not sure what it means, if it means anything at all.” Bramwell sat silently, trying to formulate his next sentence, feeling several kinds of fool.

“It might be best if you were to just tell it plain, Bramwell. No need to soften it for me, lad. I’m good for a few years yet.”

Bramwell nodded, and did just that, making sure to include all of the particulars Abigail had provided—the exact words she had attributed to his father, the “cold kiss” she had described, Barnabas’s fading away into the mist at the window.

The old man pinched the bridge of his nose, as if to ward off a headache. He picked up the snifter, and drained it in one long draught. 

“Another,” was all he would say until he had taken a ginger sip from the replenished vessel, like a cat being dosed.

“You want to know how seriously to take this ‘dream’ of your Great-aunt’s, don’t you, Bramwell?” 

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“I take it damned seriously, boy. Abigail was flighty and superstitious once, but hasn’t been for years. And that message has the sound of my boy, right enough.” The old man stopped, a tear running down his face. As Joshua struggled to compose himself, Bramwell saw the mixed grief, love and pride in his eyes. Joshua rang the bell. Patience, who had moved with Ben to the Great House until they had finished the cottage Ben was building for them on the Estate, entered the study in answer to the ring.

“Patience, please ask my daughter and young Miss Sarah to join us.”

“Aye sir,” she answered, and bustled away in a crisp ruffle of starched skirts.

The two men waited until the ladies joined them. The elder Sarah Collins swept into the room, and took a seat on the chaise lounge; young Sally Collins, as everyone at Collinwood called her namesake, joined her. Bramwell, having risen at the ladies’ entrance, reclaimed his chair.

“My dears, I hate to pry,” Joshua began, “but have either of you had any …unusual experiences since Barnabas’s death?”

“Just a dream of him, Father,” Sarah answered.

“So did I, Grandfather!” Sally exclaimed.

Bramwell interjected, “What were your dreams?”

Aunt Sarah replied first. 

“I was out at the gazebo, and was well wrapped up. I was reading Barnabas’s Wordsworth, and must have dozed off just after sunset. He was with me, looking terribly unhappy, and a little—a little fearsome, somehow. 

“That’s how he looked to me, too!” Sally interjected.

Bramwell interrupted, asking his sister, “When did you see him?”

“I was in the Old House, after we had all moved to the Great House, and fell asleep in the chaise that we left behind in the parlor.”

Sarah resumed her tale: “He told me that he loved us all, but that we weren’t safe, and that we must not ever invite him into the Great House…”

“Yes,” Sally concurred, “And that Aunt Abigail’s windows had to be blessed, to protect her.”

Sarah’s stunned expression was answer enough, in truth, but, slightly nauseated as he was, Bramwell forced himself to ask the confirmatory question.

“You both had the exact same dream?”

The two women’s eyes met. They nodded. 

“What does it mean?” Sarah asked.

Joshua’s face was a livid white. He forced himself to respond in his usual calm, clipped tone.

“It means that we need to consult with the Bradfords.”

“The Bradfords?” Sally was perplexed.

“The Bradfords,” her grandfather repeated, strength flowing in his veins as his adrenaline responded to the crisis he knew was at hand. “And more than consult. We must give my poor boy the eternal rest he has been denied.”

Sally looked to Bramwell and then to Sarah as if seeking confirmation that her grandfather had gone subtly, quietly mad. Neither Bramwell nor Sarah gave her that reassurance. Rather, they met the patriarch’s gaze with solemn attention.

“It’s happening again,” Sarah said, in a resolute voice.

“Not exactly, my dear,” her father rejoined. “In your childhood, ‘twas witchcraft. This is perhaps the result of witchcraft, or of some other horror. But your poor brother, my son, is not dead.”

“Of course he is!” Sally nearly shrieked, “we buried him just days ago!”

Joshua shook his head with infinite weariness.

“My son is not alive,” he agreed, “but neither is he dead. He is undead.”

“Undead?” Bramwell and Sally were equally mystified. Sarah gravely shook her head.

“Like Uncle Jeremiah?” she asked.

“Not quite, Sarah. Think of Barlow’s cow.”

“Barlow’s cow?” Bramwell’s thoughts were spinning out of control. 

“Don’t you recall Peter Bradford discussing it? A calf found dead, all of its blood drained from its body?”

“After everything that happened when you were a little girl, Sarah, I needed to understand what had befallen us. I read all I could find on the subjects of witchcraft and the undead. Your Great-uncle Jeremiah was but one form of the undead; there are said to be others. In Goethe’s ‘Bride of Corinth,’ Burger’s ‘Lenore,’ and in the folk tales and actual legal cases that inspired them, as recorded by Calmet in his "Treatise on Vampires and Revenants," we find what purport to be factual accounts of the undead returned from the grave to feed on blood—vampires. I have read Calmet, and he was neither a fool nor a mountebank. And he believed that there do exist vampires.”

“Vampires?” Sally’s tone bordered on the scornful.

“The dead who are raised somehow, and to continue in their… in their un-life by drinking the blood of the living.”

“Madness!” Sally exclaimed.

Joshua shot her his most imperious, supercilious glance. 

“Don’t be a fool, Sally,” he grated, “you were not even born when we all went through the flames! We all at Collinwood saw my younger brother Jeremiah stalking through the grounds after he was dead! Your own mother was abducted by Jeremiah's undead corpse! Am I not correct, Sarah?”

“Yes, Father,” she answered, “I was but a little girl then, but I remember all too well. I remember strange sicknesses afflicting me then, too.”

“I know, my dear. And the fact that Barnabas warned you, and Sally, as well as Abigail is too much coincidence to accept.”

“But if my father has become a, a vampire, why would he warn us?”

“Some believe that the vampire retains his affections even in his undead state. It is said to be so by Goethe.” Joshua stood, and crossed to one of the book-cases, and withdrew a slender volume, and after paging through it, exclaimed:

“Here it is. The undead bride of Corinth comes out from her grave, saying:

‘From my grave to wander I am forced,  
Still to seek the God’s long severed link,  
Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,  
And the lifeblood of his heart to drink.’”

Bramwell breathed, in horror, “Father--”

“Still trying to protect us, even from himself?” twin rivulets coursed down Sarah’s cheeks as she spoke.

“We must help my son,” Joshua declared with energy. “We cannot let his suffering go on. We must have the assistance of Stokes and the Bradfords, and we must find him.”

“I’ll go to the Old House tonight, Grandfather,” Bramwell declared.

“No, you will not, you jack!” The old man roared, fear and fury warring for dominance in his heart. “The sun has already set! Would you tempt my poor boy to your blood? He is trying to protect us all, and you would dangle yourself before him as bait!”

“I am sorry, Grandfather.” 

“As am I, Bramwell," the patriarch forced himself to calmness. "I fear what the effect of killing a member of his family would be upon poor Barnabas. We must save him from himself, but we can only act during the day.”

“Sarah,” he said after a minute, “Do you know the little leathern bag in my privy cabinet? Fetch it here.”

His daughter promptly obeyed. On her return, he took the bag, and commanded Bramwell to follow him.

“We must prevent Barnabas from entering the house tonight. Only Abigail’s room is open to him. Come, Bramwell, let us seal it.”

The older and the younger man strode through the Great House together, up to Aunt Abigail’s rooms. After knocking, Joshua opened the door.

Standing before him, arched sinuously over Abigail’s pale, still form, was Barnabas Collins. As his father and his son entered the room, Barnabas, his face betraying fierce hunger and equally fierce shame, started, and rose to his full height, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth onto his white frilled shirt. His gaze turned hard and cruel, and an inhuman hiss came from out his mouth, as his hands hooked into claws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The works cited by Joshua are authentic, and all were published well prior to the events depicted in this chapter. In particular, Abbot R.P. Dom. Augustin Calmet's "Treatise on Vampires and Revenants" (1746) (expanded edition, 1751), also known as "Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires and Revenants of Hungary, &c," was based in part on judicial records of what were deemed to be truthful accounts of literal vampirism (that is, the dead returned from the grave to drink the blood of the living) recorded throughout Eastern Europe.


	14. A Family Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Joshua Collins. For two decades, Collinwood has been free of the terrors that haunted us when my son Barnabas was to marry. And marry he did, for love and for pity, and the terrors ceased shortly thereafter. Then, after his wife’s death, Barnabas was taken. And now, to my horror, I am confronted by my dearly beloved son, returned in an undead state, to prey on the living, feeding on human blood.”

“Why?” Barnabas shouted, “Why did you not heed my warnings? Did not Abigail tell you? Nor Sarah? Sally, even?” His face, so loved by both Bramwell and Joshua, contorted with frustration and the guilt that he patently still could feel.

“They all did, Barnabas, just not as swiftly as you had expected them to. We just received your warnings earlier today.” Joshua’s tone was almost warm, Bramwell observed. Even in his new state as an undead creature, the old man could not but view Barnabas as his son. Bramwell was more conflicted in his response to his father’s altered visage; the supernal anger was like nothing the younger man had ever seen before in his father, and yet the familiar features were somehow…welcome.

Barnabas’s face softened. He exhaled a long, shuddering breath.

“You arrived in time, if only just. I have not taken much from her, and she should not suffer any ill effects. Give her some beef broth, and some very red meat, and she should be unharmed.”

“Won’t she be under your thrall, son?” Joshua’s voice was more gentle than Bramwell had ever heard it.

“Yes, Father,” the vampire replied glumly. “We must take steps to free her—to free the whole family of my…my taint.” He knelt at the side of Abigail’s bed, and propped her into a more comfortable position. 

“Sleep, dearest Aunt,” he murmured into her ear, “Sleep and dream pleasant dreams, happy dreams. Wake up refreshed, and hungry when Sarah brings you food.” He rose to his feet again. A crooked smile creased his features.

“A small act of reparation. Sarah will not panic if you send her, and we need to talk elsewhere.”

“Grandfather’s study, perhaps?” Bramwell interposed.

Barnabas’s head swayed in negation. “It is bad enough that Mother has grieved for me once. I do not want her to see me thus. I cannot bear to see the love in her eyes die at what I have become.”

“I understand,” Joshua answered, “Perhaps we can meet at the Old House?”

“Yes,” Barnabas assented, “I can be there in minutes. Father—bring a crucifix in case I lose control. Do not trust me more than I can bear. That goes just as much for you, Bramwell. I-I love you both, but I am dangerous company despite that fact.” He stepped back to the window, and was lost in a cloud of mist. On the other side of the window, a bat flew in the direction of the Old House.

“Come, Bramwell. We must prepare ourselves, and send Sarah to my sister.” He stroked Abigail’s forehead. As she slept, the old woman began to gently snore, her lips set in a small smile.

In Grandfather’s study, they found Sarah and Sally still waiting for them. Bramwell described what had transpired, and Sarah insisted on accompanying them to the Old House.

“But Aunt Abigail?” Bramwell expostulated.

“She can sleep a while yet. I’ll have Patience prepare a meal for her when we return.”

“Father expects to meet only myself and Grandfather.”

“He is my brother,” Sarah declared, “and I will not be kept from him.”

“This is not a pleasant evening visit, child,” Joshua insisted, “it is dangerous—he is dangerous!—and this evening will be most unpleasant.”

“Nonetheless, I will be there,” Sarah was unmovable.

“And I!” Sally joined in. Joshua rolled his eyes in frustration.

“No!” the old man rejected. “Not you! Your Father would be devastated for you to see him in his present condition. He would never forgive me if I allowed you to.”

“We have been reading Calmet while waiting for you, Grandfather,” Sally replied. “And we know what has to happen. Father died so quickly that we did not get to say goodbye to him. I want to tell him that I love him before…before the end.”

“He knows, child, he knows,” Joshua assured them. “I am quite sure that he would rather you remember him as he was in life.”

“And we will, Grandfather. But let us say goodbye.”

Joshua shook his head sadly. “May God forgive me, I have not the heart to forbid you. I can only hope that Barnabas does not think I have betrayed him.”

The patriarch handed each of them a crucifix, prompting Bramwell to facetiously inquire if he had converted to the Church of Rome. The old man frowned, and simply growled “Keep them hidden, but keep them where you can get to them easily.”

The little group left the Great House, and followed Bramwell down the path. Joshua was leaning on his cane a little, and the weight of where he was headed was slowing him down. A lamplight was burning in the parlor window of the Old House. Peering deeply into the room as they neared the door, Bramwell could see a figure seated in his father’s habitual chair.

The owner of the Old House was in residence.

The door was unlocked, and they filed in. In his chair, garbed in his burgundy colored smoking jacket, Barnabas looked like the brother Sarah loved, the father Bramwell and Sally missed sorely. When he perceived that his sister and daughter were present, Barnabas rose, shaking his head.

“Why, Father?” was all he said.

Before Joshua could answer, Sally exclaimed “We made him, Father!”

“It’s true, Barnabas!” Sarah defended her niece, “He tried to say no.”

A ghost of a smile lightened the vampire’s gloomy countenance for an instant.

"Grandfathers," he murmured sarcastically.

“You must realize that I am dangerous,” he warned, “even to you, against my own will.”

“I know,” Sarah answered, “but we may never have an opportunity--”

“I assure you, you will not.” Barnabas’s tone was certain, an older brother laying down the law.

“Then it is all the more important that we be allowed to say goodbye to you!”

Sally flew into her father’s automatically open embrace, joined by Sarah. They held Barnabas tight, with every bit of their strength. He gently returned the embrace, even as his fangs extended.

Bramwell and Joshua looked on apprehensively. Bramwell caught his father’s eye and Barnabas shook his head gently. For now at least, the man and not the monster was in control. And in this moment, Barnabas Collins was wholly himself again.

When the embrace ended, Joshua saw that his son had tears in his eyes. As he composed himself, Barnabas turned around and busied himself at the drinks table. He passed around sherry for the ladies, port for his father, and a brandy each for Bramwell and himself. The scene had taken on a disturbing air of false normality.  
Barnabas himself seemed aware of the temptation to pretend all was well; he glanced at his father.

“I apologize, Father, for suggesting that Sarah and Sally should not have been allowed to join you. It means all the world to me,” he broadened out his words to include all present, “all the world,” he repeated, “to be able to say these final goodbyes. But we have business to do this night—man’s business, and a wild, horrific business, it shall be. My dearest sister, my dearest daughter. Won’t you tell me once more that you love me, and then let me go on to do what is needed to safeguard you, and our whole family?” 

Sarah answered firmly: “Would you do so if our positions were reversed, and if I asked you to abandon me?”

“Never,” he conceded, but went on, “the ending will be terrible—I would not have you present. Stay for now—let me tell you all what you need to know—and then let Father and Bramwell—or, even better, Ben Stokes—do what is needful. I beg you for this mercy.”

Sarah unhappily nodded; Sally hesitated but followed suit.

“Very well. You all know about the strange events of 1795 and 1796? Of the supernatural events that took place, and of Victoria Bradford’s trial for witchcraft?”

“She was innocent,” Sally stated with certainty.

“Indeed she was,” Barnabas replied.

“Mother was the witch,” Sally said with no hesitance.

“I knew it!,” Sarah declared, “She hated Josette, and was hateful to you—and then you married her, and Josette was gone! But you and Angelique went on to live happily ever after!”

Barnabas shot an interrogatory look at his father, who shook his head in a decided negative. Joshua had kept the secret. 

"Not quite ever after, Sarah," Barnabas murmured.

Bramwell looked around seeking enlightenment. “Mother?” he croaked.

“Mother told me she was the witch. She said that any girls of her blood might have latent powers, and that we must be very careful not to use them except in dire circumstances, lest we draw the attention of—of evil forces,” Sally explained.

“Of Diabolos, you mean,” Barnabas corrected.

“Yes. No woman of her blood should speak that—that word.”

“Your mother died,” Barnabas resumed, “because he—you know whom I mean—withdrew his protection against illness from her, or perhaps created her illness, when she and I together banished him from this house. He then sent his messenger—a bat—to curse me through its bite.”

“But why?” Sarah asked.

“Revenge,” Sally explained promptly. “Mother had escaped him, and he could do no more to her than kill her. But he had to show he was Master, to frighten his slaves, and retain his power.”

“And so –Angelique is free and at rest—and I would thank—if an unholy thing such as I could—for her deliverance. But I am left to bear the curse—forever.” Barnabas, exhausted, resumed his seat.

Bramwell started upright.

“There’s someone at the door!” he whispered loudly. They all turned toward the doorway. A cloaked figure breached the doorway and stepped into the opening of the parlor.

“Naomi,” Joshua groaned in despair.

Barnabas’s jaw dropped, as his own eyes met the flashing, lambent orbs of his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barnabas strives to preserve his humanity, alters, and strives again. Two moves to checkmate.


	15. The Waiting House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My name is Patience Stokes. My husband and I have served the Collins family for many years now, but for the first time since Miss Angelique rescued me from the tavern, I am afeard. My mistress is dead, the master is dead, and yet my Ben hints some other horrors await--that Mr Barnabas has come back, but is dead, and dangerous. Today, my Ben plans to save the Collins family and our own.

“Barnabas!” Naomi’s voice was hushed, ecstatic, even a little fearful. “You’re alive!”

She looked around the circle of her family, bewildered.

“Why was I not told such joyful news? How did you survive? Where have you been?” With each question, Naomi’s voice rose in volume and in tone. She was, all realized, working herself into what used to be called a “state” before peace came upon the Great House.

Barnabas crossed to her, and took her hands in his own.

“I did not survive, Mother,” he said as calmly, as compellingly, as he could. “I died."

“But that’s not possible—is this a jape?” Her face suggested that if it were, it was not appreciated.

“Feel my hands, Mother—touch my face—the life is gone from me, and I am only here as a part of a curse.”

Naomi touched her son’s face, swiftly pulled a small oval mirror from the folds of her her cloak, and held it to Barnabas’s lips, and drew back, frightened.

“No breath. No breath. Abigail was right; you feel like a corpse,” she said, “but you sound like my son. Surely this is cannot be death.”

Joshua had risen, and stood beside his wife.

“It is death, Naomi,” he asserted. “Death for our boy, and, unless we help him to peace, for all of us.”

“I do not understand, Joshua.”

“Barnabas has been brought back from death but not into life—he is undead.” Naomi’s look of befuddlement was pitiable. The old woman shook her head, refusing to believe.

“Naomi, it is true. Barnabas is suffering from a thirst for blood—human blood. He has manfully resisted harming us so far, but even his strength of will may break, and he could kill or enslave any one of us here!”

Sarah shuddered at her father’s bluntness. She gazed at her brother, and saw a gnawing distress in him—was it for the pain of seeing his family round about him, knowing that he must sever himself from them for their sake, or was it the pangs of his bloodlust beginning to overpower his love for them?

“Not my son,” Naomi tearfully insisted, “Barnabas loves us! If he needs to feed on blood, he can have mine!” She matched her words by placing her hands on Barnabas’s shoulders, and canting her head to expose her neck to him.

Each of them—Joshua, Sarah, Sally, and Bramwell called out to her, but Barnabas was quickest. His face twisted with grief and aching need, and his head rose slightly, and then struck out like that of a cobra into its prey.

The old woman screamed, and Sarah lunged at her brother, crucifix in hand. He twisted away from them in agony, shrieking “Put it away! Put it away!” He stumbled as he retreated, falling into a bookcase still lined with his legal tomes.

“This is what I am!” He roared, fury and self-hatred overcoming even his deadly red thirst. “I am a VAMPIRE!” 

He stood before them, alone, at bay, waiting for his family to fall upon him with their cruel silver crosses, or, perhaps, he was plotting escape. 

“I never sought this. I was cursed, cursed by evil itself.” He gasped out his words as if the utterance was physically painful. “I have striven to protect you all, to not harm you—but my need to feed is torture! I want you—all of you—to join me in this state, so that I will not be alone—yet I know that desire blasphemes life itself!”

As he faced them all, he heard his mother’s voice. 

“I’m all right, Sally. I’m all right,” and then, “Joshua, what are we to do?”

For once, the old man was indecisive. No one could attempt an answer to her question.

“You must leave now,” Barnabas sadly replied. “You must come back in the brightness of day—you, Father, and Ben Stokes—and you must do it early so that you are not racing the nightfall. And you must pound the stake through my heart. Strike true, and strike hard—you will free me from this horror.”

“Must we, Barnabas?”

“Mother, if not for Sarah, I would have slain you, and quaffed the very life from you. With every night that passes, the need strengthens, and my humanity ebbs in its struggle against it. Soon, I will be monster only, and the man I was will wither away into nothingness. You must save me from that. I do not wish to exist as the creature that I am becoming. Do this for me, Father—or if you cannot, trust in Ben.”   
“I will, son.” Joshua’s voice was strong and stern, though his eyes blurred with tears.

“My coffin is behind this bookcase. The secret door opens when you remove Tacitus’s "Annals." You understand?”

Joshua and Bramwell nodded; Sally groaned in horror at her father’s matter-of-fact planning for his own destruction.

Naomi shyly asked, “Can we not at least say goodbye to you, Barnabas?”

He smiled, painfully, wearily. “Yes, Mother. Sarah very effectively recalled me to myself. For now at any rate.”

His embrace of his mother was tender, gentle, as he had been to her his whole life. He whispered an apology into her ear, and she kissed his cheek. Sally was next, holding him with all her strength.

“Goodbye, dearest,” he said to her, and then embraced Bramwell. The young man repressed a tear, but told his father that he loved him and always would. 

Sarah hung back, unsure of her welcome. Barnabas opened his arms, and she went to him, for one last time. Her tears wet his neck, shaming him for his loss of control.

Finally, there was only Joshua. The old man tried hard to maintain his usual demeanor. He took Barnabas’s hand, and whispered to his son, “I am proud to be your father, Barnabas. You will rest in peace.”

Finally, the Old House was empty, and Barnabas was free to weep for the life he had lost, that had been taken from him by Diabolos. In sheer exhaustion from the emotions of the evening, he slumbered in his chair. 

When the clock struck eleven, the noise rang in his preternaturally sensitive ears. The thirst would be denied no longer. Barnabas pulled on his cloak, and opened the window. He flew to the docks; he had, upon realizing that cattle were a poor substitute for human blood, sated his abominable needs several times behind the seedy taverns of Collinsport with desperate women of the lower class. As a Collins, he had never thought of having recourse to such women; as a night creature, however, he turned to them with avarice, if also with some pity.

That evening, his pity was in short supply. One of the women of the town was found drained white, her body carelessly strewn behind the Eagle; the other lived, but feared the edge of night for the rest of her days.

***  
Joshua and Naomi spent the night in her bedroom. The old man was as patient as he could be with her questions, sedulously telling her the truth. When at last they fell asleep, they were entwined with one another. They slept later than usual, almost until noon. When they awoke, they were still exhausted. Joshua struggled to rise, but failed to do so.

Bramwell Collins had seen the exhaustion in the old man’s eyes. He borrowed his grandfather’s copy of Calmet’s Treatise, and conned it as if it were a legal textbook, to ensure that the deed was properly done. 

In the morning, while the servants were breaking their fast, Bramwell entered the kitchen. The butler and housekeeper were not in sight, but Ben and Patience Stokes, along with Wendy, were finishing up the morning meal. Bramwell apologized to them for intruding on their break-fast, and asked Ben if the older man would help him.

“‘Course I will, Mr. Bramwell.” And Stokes rose and stalked out of the Great House, advancing age not yet having shrunken him. As they walked toward the woods on the Estate, Ben asked:

“’Tis Mr. Barnabas, isn’t it, Mr. Bramwell.”

“Yes, Ben.”

“Aye. I knew it must be.”

“You did?”

Ben shook his head, and muttered, “I knew twould come to this. He were a good man, Mr. Bramwell—aye, and a good friend!—but dead should be dead.”

“I know, Ben.”

“How can we help un?”

“You know he’s a vamp—”

“Aye, a vampire, Mr. Bramwell.”

“And he can only be destroyed during the day?”

“I know that too, lad.”

“And we can only do it by putting a stake through his heart, or silver bullets in the chest.”

“I ain’t got no silver bullets, Mr. Bramwell—but I do have this,” and the heavyset servant pulled a sharp blackthorn stake from his cloak.

Bramwell nodded, relieved.

“Where’s Mr. Joshua, son?”

“Asleep, Ben. This ordeal will kill him. Father asked Grandfather to see to his, his”—

“His destruction, lad. He knew what he was asking.”

“But not who; Grandfather is too old to do it.”

“So you will?”

“Yes,” Bramwell replied, “if you will help me.”

“Aye. I will. ‘tis a hard thing you and me be doing, but ‘tis necessary.”

The walked the rest of the way to the Old House in silence. As Bramwell opened the door, and walked to the bookcase, he pulled out Tacitus’s “Annals.” As the book left the shelf, the door swung wide. Barnabas’s coffin lay within.

The two men opened the box. Barnabas Collins’s closed eyes and wax-like pallor stared up at his son and his oldest friend left in the world.

Ben removed the stake and the hammer he had carried. He proffered them to Bramwell, who took them, angled the point of the stake above his father’s heart, raised the mallet—

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Sarah! Why are you here?”

“Same reason as you. My father might not die if he came here and did what Barnabas asked him to do—but we don’t know that he wouldn’t, do we? Besides,” she concluded, “we don’t have to be so crude, and shatter my poor brother’s heart.”

“Well, I’m not cutting off my father’s head—”

“We agree on something, then,” Sarah rejoined.

“So what are you suggesting?” Bramwell gibed.

“Calmet says that if you place a cross on the top of the inside of the coffin lid, the vampire will sleep forever.”

“Actually,” Bramwell corrected, “the vampire will sleep forever, as long as the cross is not removed—how can we be sure of that?”

The cousins had reached an impasse, until Ben Stokes spoke.

“We bury him secret.”

“What do you mean, Ben?” Sarah asked.

“There’s a secret room—”

“Yes, Ben,” Sarah interrupted, “but if somebody else lives in this house, they’ll find it, surely?”

“Not the secret room here,” Ben corrected, “The one in the Mausoleum.”

Sarah and Bramwell looked at each other in confusion.

“The Mausoleum has a secret room, behind the graves, that was built to hide supplies in the Revolution. Only me, Mr. Barnabas, and Mr. Joshua know about it. Now you two. I’ll show you.”

Bramwell nodded, satisfied. “Sarah do you have a cross?”

I have three—one for me, one for you, and a third for the coffin. Sorry, Ben, I didn’t expect you to come out with Bramwell.”

“That’s all right, we still have plenty of day. But we’ve got to get a-moving.”

Sarah stepped over to the coffin, and slid the cross into a brace at the top of the inside of the coffin lid. She kissed her brother’s forehead, one last time, and handed Ben and Bramwell each a cross. 

“Hold ‘em yet a while. We’ve got to get this to the Mausoleum before dark. Get some chains from the cellar, Mr. Bramwell.”

Bramwell disappeared down the staircase to the cellar. 

“Miss Sarah, run to stable yard and have my Patience get us a team and a cart. And hurry!”

The clock on the mantle chimed the hour—two o’clock.

When Ben and Bramwell had finished wrapping the coffin in chains and locking it securely, Sarah returned in the cart with Patience. 

“Father isn’t feeling well, and neither is Mother,” she announced. 

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Ben growled, “pick up your end, boy.”

“I told him that Ben was taking care of everything.”

“Oh, thanks so very much, Sarah,” Bramwell gasped as he and Ben hoisted the coffin onto the cart.

“It’s for his sake, Bramwell—Father would feel awful if he knew his grandson had to do his duty.”

“But it’s just fine if old Ben does the work,” Stokes grumbled, “I’m glad your mother turned him to a cat.”

“What?” Bramwell nearly dropped his end of the casket.

“I remember that!” Sarah smiled at the memory.

“That was some angry cat,” Ben announced with a residual pleasure. Joshua had not been a kind master in those days.

“Get on with ye,” Patience rebuked them all, “We haven’t all day for chatter.” 

The clock chimed the hour: three o’clock.

The ride to the Mausoleum and opening both its gates and the secret room took more time than they had planned for. The late afternoon sum was faded gold, and the first touches of red lit the sky as they sealed up the secret room, and locked the gates behind them. The bravado the trio had affected to get the job done did not survive their arrival at the Great House. Sarah wept, Bramwell held her, and Ben—Ben reported to his master, who shook his hand, and passed him the deed to the largest cottage on the estate. 

“The cottage comes with some land, enough for you and Patience to have an income. You need never work another day if you do not wish to. You are your own man now, Ben Stokes. You have been a faithful servant to the family, but more than that, a good friend to my son. Thank you for helping him when I was unable to.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Joshua.”

“We both know I’m not, Ben.” 

The sun set at Collinwood. The lamps flared into life at the Great House, the night-time routine continued to be followed. At the Old House, though, all was in darkness, and in repose, as if waiting for its master to return.

And wait it did, for no one else ever entered it without feeling a brooding presence, an unwelcoming atmosphere, precluding comfort. The Old House waited, and waited for what it knew not.


	16. Entr'acte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eyes I dare not meet in dreams  
> In death's dream kingdom  
> These do not appear:  
> There, the eyes are  
> Sunlight on a broken column  
> There, is a tree swinging  
> And voices are  
> In the wind's singing  
> More distant and more solemn  
> Than a fading star.
> 
> Let me be no nearer  
> In death's dream kingdom  
> Let me also wear  
> Such deliberate disguises  
> Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves  
> In a field  
> Behaving as the wind behaves  
> No nearer-
> 
> Not that final meeting  
> In the twilight kingdom  
> \--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men."

(I)

In his house of stone, dead Barnabas waits sleeping.

During the day, until night falls, he is a corpse.

He awakens as the sun dies for the night. He is trapped, pinned to the cushioned bed of his coffin like a butterfly to a board.

Except--

He cannot die.

He can rage, he can hate, he can despair--but he cannot move, not even his lips.

He cannot scream.

He longs--longs in agony for the night to end, for the feeling to leave his arms, his legs, his mind.

At least the day is merciful; he has no sensations, not even thoughts. 

It is not true death, but the pain stops, for a little while.

(II)

How could his father have done this to him!

He silently, rages, immobile, but sentient.

And oh, so very thirsty!

The night should be his friend, a lovely black cloak, as familiar as the one he wore among the living, even after his death--but it is torment, ache, need, fear that the ordeal will be quite literally eternal.

Was it his father who did this to him?

He is a man of reason, a lawyer.

Surely not Father. He knew enough to know that this was damnation, not mercy.

His Father is dead.

He does not know how he knows this, what voice out of Spiritus Mundi has informed him.

He knows, that is all. 

The first year has ended.

(III)

In his house of stone, dead Barnabas lies sleeping.

The family grieve, move on, live.

Naomi warns them, at least one person in every generation of the family must know what became of poor Barnabas.

The secret must not be lost, lest future generations be put at risk.

So they do; Bramwell Collins tells his children;

Sarah Collins tells hers.

Time passes; Eighty years since Bramwell and Sarah found their "kinder way."

Edith Collins it is who breaks the chain.

She dies, knowing the secret must be told. 

Edith dies, reproaching herself for having squirreled it away too long.

It is 1897.

The secret is lost.

Eighty years of imprisonment, thirst, immobility.

Is Barnabas Collins sane?

Would you be?

(IV)

A new century; a war to end all wars.

Battle, murder, sudden death in the trenches, and in the streets.

A hundred years' imprisonment.

A baby is born to Jamison and Catherine Collins; Elizabeth.

The Twentieth Century is as thirsty for blood as Barnabas Collins is, despairing in his tomb.

He rages, he mourns, he wishes himself dead, truly dead.

Then morning comes, and his torment is ended, for a little while.

It all begins again, worse every time, at sunset.

He has one last card to play, but cannot--will not--must not.

He thinks that if he would pray to Diabolos, 

beg for permission to enter his service, the Fiend might be amused.

But Angelique, wherever in all of space and time, the Empyrean skies or the Stygian depths, she might be,

She would lose her faith in him.

He does not beg or pray to her killer.

Not yet.

(V)

In his house of stone, dead Barnabas waits sleeping.

The world's economy is shattered, but little Roger is just two today; 

he does not know.

Elizabeth, twelve years old, knows that Collinsport is looking shabby, its people sad.

War comes again; Barnabas can smell blood faraway.

A voice out of Spiritus Mundi comes to him; he knows it not. 

It speaks softly a riddle from a long-dead madman 

(Is he, Barnabas, that madman? He does not know). The voice says:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die."

(VI)

Europe is a charnel house (Barnabas is tantalized by a faint whiff of the blood and devastation), but the War ends.

Elizabeth marries a handsome ex-soldier.

Jamison Collins dies.

Elizabeth has a daughter.

A foundling is born and abandoned; a kind woman names the child "Victoria Winters."

After all, the woman thinks, everyone deserves a name.

Elizabeth Collins is alone. Her husband--departs. Or, rather, is no longer seen.

It is just over one hundred and forty years since the stone closed over Barnabas, without killing him.

Elizabeth's more luxurious imprisonment has begun.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."

So is Barnabas Collins dead?

Death has not died; that we know.

Nor has Paul Stoddard. Time enough for that later.

(VII)

In his house of stone, dead Barnabas waits sleeping.

Roger Collins is in trouble.

So is Burke Devlin.

Laura Collins preens with voluptuous enjoyment of it all.

Some worm in Barnabas Collins's brain stirs. Trouble, he thinks, clear-headed for an instant.

Will he ever be again?

He does not know; the repetitive, unending misery, of thirst, and cramp, and ache and cold--

What is Barnabas Collins now?

A decade of mistrust, of vengeance planned, but not yet ready simmers.

Elizabeth can no longer wait; she seeks help.

A young woman--Victoria Winters, do you know her?--takes a train.

A car careens off the road; a secret bubbles to the surface;

A man very like Paul Stoddard battens on to his--widow?

That man has a friend--or accomplice--who wants pretty things.

He reaches out for them greedily.

Willie Loomis knows where to find more of them.

In His House of Stone, Dead Barnabas Waits, Sleeping.

(VIII)

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons, even death may die."

"THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE. AND WITH STRANGE AEONS, EVEN DEATH MAY DIE."

"EVEN DEATH MAY DIE."

"EVEN DEATH"--but who is death?

Is Barnabas Collins?

(IX)

In his house of stone, dead Barnabas waits sleeping. 

IN HIS HOUSE OF STONE, DEAD BARNABAS WAITS SLEEPING.

IN HIS HOUSE OF STONE, DEAD BARNABAS WAITS SLEEPING.

Willie Loomis is on his way....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Dracula, Bram Stoker slyly quotes Berger's "Lenore": "For the Dead Travel Fast."
> 
> But that presumes that they are free. 
> 
> What is undeath like if you are penned in a tight confined case, unable to move, to speak, to escape?
> 
> What of the ever-increasing blood thirst, that ever grows, and yet is never, not once, slaked, or even alleviated by a drop?
> 
> What becomes of a man pinned like a butterfly to a board, who cannot even die?
> 
> Oppressive as his confinement was, Edmond Dantes cannot tell you.
> 
> Among the legions of the undead, Dracula does not know, nor does Lestat, or even Count Orlok.
> 
> Barnabas Collins learns the answer over a century and a half.
> 
> The quotations are from H.P. Lovecraft, one freely adapted, the other as he wrote it.


	17. Revenant: Collinwood, 1967

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Victoria Winters. Two sailors, Jason McGuire, a glib operator who seems to frighten Mrs. Stoddard, and his …companion, Willie Loomis, a bullying thug, have taken residence in the Great House. Or should I say that they have taken over the Great House? It is hard to say. Mrs. Stoddard pretends that all is normal, but the younger man has taken liberties with not just me but with Carolyn Stoddard, my employer’s beloved daughter. She and I are always together now, for fear that Willie’s violence will bubble over and he will turn it on us. Jason vows that he is under control, and that he will leave, but we are afraid…”

Willie Loomis, middle sized, sandy-haired, gazed at the portrait as if transfixed. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” he sighed. “So pretty. I wouldn’t need Jason no more if I got those. He wants to pay me off and send me away, but he’s missing the big score.” He mused awhile, unconscious that he was being observed. 

“I had no idea you were among the cognoscenti when it came to art, Loomis,” Roger Collins’s lofty tone drew Willie from his reverie.

“The what?”

A thin smile creased Roger’s features. Shaking his head, and looking down on Willie from his considerable height, the slender, tweed-suited Roger practically radiated disdain. 

“You like art, I mean.”

Willie, still preoccupied, smiled.

“Yeah. I do, Mr. Collins.” The rapt expression in his face surprised Roger, as did the politeness of the reply.

“Well, have at it, then.” Roger started toward the Grand Staircase.

“Mr. Collins?”

“Hmmm?” Roger turned, just at the base of the steps.

“Is it true that she—I mean Naomi Collins—was buried with her jewels?”

“That’s what the legend says. I find it hard to believe.”

“Yeah. ‘Course. Thanks, Mr. Collins.” Willie returned to contemplate the portrait.

Rolling his eyes, Roger resumed his trek upstairs, muttering “Liz may be content operating a home for demented sailors, but I don’t see the attraction of the thing.”  
Willie was deaf to the barbed remark, fascinated by the portrait. The meticulously depicted jewels held his attention at first, but then the force of the personality of the subject began to claim his attention.

Those eyes. . . so piercing, so cold. A bad man to cross, Willie thought, grinning. I’m glad he’s long gone, he coulda been trouble….

Willie kept staring at the portrait. As he locked eyes with the painted image, an oppressive sense of the subject’s presence crept into his consciousness, growing ever more powerful. Almost alive. Why, Willie could almost hear a heartbeat.

Almost hear? No, it was deafening, drowning out his own thoughts, and compelling him to act. Each beat promised him something: gold, diamonds, jewels so rare that they were entirely forgotten. Riches, power,…Life. Unending life. 

Willie Loomis knew where he had to go. To Naomi Collins’s tomb at Eagle Hill Cemetery. He nodded obediently to the image in the painting, smiling widely. He knew he would need some tools, and gathered them from the garage. He contemplated using Roger’s car, but was afraid he’d be reported for theft if the older man noticed he’d borrowed it. 

He’d have to walk to Eagle Hill, but that was ok. It was five miles, but he was young and strong, and so full of life…and he wanted them jewels, oh, so badly.

He was on his way.

*** 

The pesky caretaker had wasted his time, with his carrying on about evil spirits, but Willie had pretended and finally shook the old guy off. He had found the stone commemorating Naomi Collins, but had no idea how to get to the old lady’s tomb. Was it one of the three plain stone boxes laid out in front of the plaques?

No, Willie didn’t buy that. 

Was it behind the plaque?

Maybe, but the thing wasn’t a door. So where the hell was the old lady laid to rest?

He raised his flashlight, banishing the encroaching darkness, and scanned the wall all around him. Everything was smooth, with a frustrating air of permanence. Nothing to pull open, or push, no doors—wait a sec.

The lion's head had a ring depending from it—a ring that could be pulled?

It took a couple tries to get a cable through the ring, but Willie managed it. He pulled—nothing. He pulled again. Still nothing. He was almost weeping with frustration as he pulled a third time—and with a sharp sound of a lock releasing, the panel swung inside, revealing another chamber. Grabbing the flashlight and his tools, Willie entered the secret chamber, and was confronted by an oblong wooden casket, wrapped in chains. He struggled to break the locks, but he succeeded.

All he had to do was raise the lid.

Creaking, hinges resisting him mightily, Willie raised the lid; as he steadied the prop to hold the lid upraised, he was distracted by the clang of a small metal object tumbling out of the lid, and ringing a warning against the marble floor. 

The corpse revealed was withered, but not a woman. The clothes and jewels were patently those from the portrait, but the strong commanding features were sunken in, desiccated. Willie reached for the ribband with its gold insignia, joy welling in his heart.

Until his eyes met those of the corpse. Eyes that were not closed, but wide open. Sunken in, yes, but burning with a terrible fury.

A slender, almost skeletal hand seize Willie’s throat, and pulled him downward with a terrible, merciless grip. Willie could not even scream as the ancient face attached itself to his throat, cruel slashing incisors opening his veins, and a horrifying sound like a baby loudly feeding confirmed that his blood was being sucked from him.

Then Willie screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

***  
Barnabas Collins drank deeply, oh, so deeply. His long-raging thirst could at last be slaked. Nothing could stop him from imbibing every last drop of blood that was within this pathetic grave robber. Elated, he drank with a callousness he had never displayed prior to his imprisonment. 

Free! Free! The blood flowing into him replenished his body and his mind. The hopeless, helpless years were ended, and nothing could stop him! 

Barnabas Collins fed with no care for the weakening, whimpering man from whom he fed, and he fed well. 

As Loomis’s breath began to rasp, his heart to slow, Barnabas stopped draining the man. He pushed him away, letting him topple to the floor, where he lay, sniveling. Stepping out of the coffin, Barnabas knelt down by Willie Loomis. The terrified young man was crying, trying to beg for his life.

Contemptuously, Barnabas lifted him up by the collar of his jacket, so that they were eye to eye.   
“Do you want to live, Willie?” The question was put in an indifferent tone.

“P-please,” Loomis begged, “please don’t kill me.”

Barnabas tore open his shirt, just a little bit, a tear that would be covered by his cravat. With a long fingernail, he tore his own flesh, producing a sluggish, small ooze of blood. He forced Willie’s face to his chest so tightly that the man could not breathe unless he…ah, that was it! The terrified Willie lapped from Barnabas’s chest the tiny amount of blood that the shallow wound could produce without a beating heart and a functioning circulatory system to encourage blood flow, and then swallowed. Dead blood, not the rich, reviving fountain he had taken from Willie, but enough to tether the young man to him, to subjugate him to the vampire’s will. 

A wicked smile crossed Barnabas’s face, as he carefully positioned Willie, still seated, legs splayed out, against the wall of the secret room.

“You will live, Willie,” the vampire said, almost gently. “As long as you obey me, and serve me well, you will live. Do you understand?”

“Yes—um, yes, uh—Mister Collins?”

Barnabas’s fierce bark of a laugh was not the staccato exclamation of humor his friends would have recognized. But it lacked the cruelty the vampire’s actions had initially displayed. With a smile that was almost charming, Barnabas considered for a moment.

“Under the circumstances, Willie, I think ‘Barnabas’ will suffice.”

“Ok, Mr—ok, Barnabas.”

“I saw images of Collinwood flitting through your mind, Willie. You must tell me of the family—who lives there, and what they are like.”

Willie began speaking, and continued speaking for a long time. But slowly the young man began to weaken, and to get muzzy-headed. 

Barnabas rose, and lifted Willie to his feet. 

“Barnabas, I don’t feel too good,” Willie swayed even within his grasp.

“I know, Willie. I will bring you to Collinwood, and you will be better for sleeping and eating tomorrow. You will meet me at the Old House, after the sun has set.”

“OK, Barnabas,” Willie murmured.

Shaking his head with an ironic smile, Barnabas muttered “Too greedy. But you’ll be all right.”  
And stepping into the mist, Barnabas Collins brought his servant to Collinwood, and commanded him to go inside.

Exhausted, Willie obeyed. 

“One more thing. Invite me in.”

“P-please come in, Barnabas.”

“Thank you, Willie, I am glad to. Can you get to your room?”

“Sure, Barnabas.”

“Go, then. Eat something if you can, then sleep.”

As Willie staggered into the kitchen, Barnabas Collins looked around the great hall for the first time in a century and a half.

He smiled, a proud, chilly smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously some variation from the original scene, as we are not bound to the rules of daytime TV that limited the writing staff. In addition to Calmet's Treatise, for the rest of this tale, I draw on Montague Summers's two books "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" (1928) and "The Vampire in Europe" (1929), and, of course, on Bram Stoker's novel.


	18. Cousin Barnabas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Victoria Winters. After all the dread Carolyn and I have shared, our fear of Willie Loomis has been alleviated. He is so very different, so suddenly. Apologetic, cringing almost. He is so quiet, as if all the life has been sucked out of him. When Carolyn shouted at him this morning, I thought he was going to cry. He is afraid of her. I admit that no longer having to fear his touch is so very liberating, but I almost feel sorry for him. Mrs. Stoddard and Jason McGuire want him out of the house, and he has agreed to go. But as he set out, he seemed so wan, so hopeless, that I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy. What could have broken him so quickly, so completely?”

Willie Loomis found to his surprise that he felt a little better, after all. 

He had vomited up his first effort at a meal, the sausages that Mrs. Johnson had brought back from the market. But the poached eggs—Willie had learned to cook on shipboard—were just right. A little bland, but wholesome, restoring his energy without challenging his digestion or taste buds. Followed by hot buttered toast and cold water, the meal had finally banished the terrible coppery, metallic taste of blood from his palate.

He didn’t dare try anything bolder, like the coffee he so loved, let alone orange juice. Nursery staples for you, Loomis, he thought, recalling Jason using these words after a squall that had left Willie horribly ill.

As morning drew into afternoon, he began to tremble. Both Jason and Roger Collins had come to shift him out of the Great House, Roger with mockery, Jason with threats and a pitiable amount of cash. Neither man frightened him now. 

No, his fear was reserved for his new master, the Man in the Portrait. That was all Willie could bear to think of him as, because if he admitted that the Man in the Portrait had a name (“Barnabas will suffice, Willie,” echoed in his mind for a moment), then he would have to admit it was all real. That he had been bitten and drained by a-a man (a vampire, Willie, a VAMPIRE), that he had gulped down some of that man’s (no, Willie, that VAMPIRE’S) blood, and, worst of all, that he longed for the Man in the Portrait to comfort him, somehow—Willie could not understand what he was feeling, what he ached for, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

Confused, terrified, clinging to routine, Willie ambled out of Collinwood, and found his way to the Blue Whale for a drink. He couldn’t touch it. Burke Devlin had come up to him, and challenged him to a fight in front of Carolyn and Victoria, and he had trembled and begged Devlin to leave him be. Devlin hadn’t let it go so easily of course; he made Willie apologize to both women (he’d already done that at the Big House, he thought, feeling a little put-upon), but Willie had done it anyway. He just didn’t have any fight in him. If Devlin had told him to lick Victoria’s shoes, or Carolyn’s, he would have done it, despite his shame and humiliation. 

Willie couldn’t stand up for himself; he knew that he was so obviously pathetic that even Devlin had relented, and asked what had happened to him. With a queasy grin, Willie tried to pass it off as nothing, but Devlin was no fool. He knew something terrible had happened to Willie, and might have tried to pry it out of him. So Willie had no choice but to leave the Blue Whale, and to meander back to the Estate, and the Old House, where he would, in a few hours, meet the Man in the Portrait.

He had told Willie to eat and to take care of himself, so Willie followed up his breakfast with a meal at the Collinsport Diner, just off the Inn. Maggie Evans watched him with a jaundiced eye, but when he humbly asked for a burger and a chocolate malt, she nodded suspiciously.

Maggie’s flinty gaze made him aware that here was one more person Willie Loomis had made an enemy of, and so he stumbled out a broken apology, even addressing her as “Miss Evans.”

Maggie had laughed then, finally, and shot him a barbed look.

“You going to behave from now on, Willie Loomis?” She challenged him.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he sheepishly replied, and she shook her head like a parent with an errant child.

“Maggie is good enough, so long as you behave like a gentleman, Willie Loomis. Understand?”

“Yes, Maggie, thank you, Maggie,” he placated her. 

“How do you want your burger?”

“Rare,” he answered automatically, even though he preferred them well.

When he ate the burger, the bloody meat transported him into momentary ecstasy.

“Oh, Maggie,” he sighed with pleasure, “that’s the best burger I ever had.”

Maggie smiled, a real smile, and Willie blushed as she gently tapped his cheek.

“Well, you needed it,” she answered, “here’s your malt.”

It was exquisite. Willie felt something that he thought he’d lost forever—he felt happy. He paid the check, leaving a generous tip (not Roger Collins generous, but bountiful for Willie), and began walking toward the Old House. He reached the door just as sunset gave way to night, and knocked gently.

“Come in, Willie,” said the Man in the Portrait, and Willie obeyed.

Standing before him was Barnabas Collins, in a modern three piece suit. It was well cut, dark with subtle pinstriping. A gold chain bisected Barnabas’s abdomen, fob at the central button, watch in the left side vest pocket. A red tie, new shoes, and well-combed hair completed the modern yet traditional styling of the man in front of him.

“Barnabas,” Willie marveled, “how’d you do it?”

“You freed me just after sunset, Willie; it was only 6 o’clock when I brought you to Collinwood. I pawned some of my effects, and found a good store that was open until eight, and so I am–-as you see—far less conspicuous than I would be in knee breeches and jabot.” 

He looked his acolyte over carefully.

“You look much improved yourself, Willie. How are you feeling?”

“Better, Barnabas. A lot better, actually.”

The vampire smiled, so normally that Willie forgot to be afraid.

“Good,” Barnabas affirmed. “You should bring your things from the Great House tonight or tomorrow, and move in. Take any of the bedrooms upstairs, except for the room with the portrait of my wife—the blonde woman in a white dress. That room will one day be mine again, I trust.” The last sentence was spoken with special emphasis, like a solemn declaration.

“Ok, Barnabas.”

“Also, get in any food you will need—get whatever you enjoy; I won’t be sharing it. We are going to get to work starting next week, I suspect.”

“To work?”

“Are you handy, Willie? Can you use tools well?”

“Yeah, sure, Barnabas.”

Another friendly smile from the vampire. “Excellent. I intend to restore this house, Willie, once I have obtained the owner’s permission.”

“You’re gonna ask Mrs. Stoddard to let you restore the house?”

“Just so, Willie. So I must go to Collinwood, and you—you should choose a bedroom, and make it comfortable for yourself. You have money?”

“A little.”

“If you run low, come to me. You will not find me stingy,” Barnabas said easily, but then a touch of steel entered his voice, “as long as you work hard and well.”

“Sure, Barnabas,” Willie was sweating now, “’course I will!”

The vampire’s charming smile and soothing voice returned. “Of course you will, Willie. You and I will bring this house back to life, and all will be well. If I don’t see you this evening, do not worry. We can speak again tomorrow night.”

Barnabas nodded politely, and walked to the front door. He swung a new Inverness cape around his shoulders, and picked up a silver handled cane that looked quite old.

“Good night, Willie.”

“G’night Barnabas,” Willie replied, and wondered if he was clinically insane.

***

Mrs. Johnson was summoned from the kitchen to answer the front door at the Great House by a firm, authoritative rapping. When she swung the door open, a well-dressed gentleman in a dark suit and an Inverness cape, wearing a patently expensive hat stood before her, a silver-headed cane in his grasp.

“Good evening,” the elegant gentleman addressed her politely, even as her eyes rounded like saucers. She stepped back, stealing a glance toward a portrait of the 18th Century Collins scion Barnabas, a portrait she was disconcerted to realize, for which this early evening caller could almost have been the model, so strong was the resemblance.

At her silence, the gentleman inquired, “This is Collinwood, isn’t it? And the mistress here is Mrs. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, is she not?” 

Feebly, Mrs. Johnson confirmed both the name of the house and of its mistress. 

Still polite, the gentleman persisted, “Then perhaps you’d do me the courtesy to inform Mrs. Stoddard that her cousin is calling, and wishes to pay his respects.”

Mrs. Johnson, still flustered, invited the gentleman inside, and received his hat, which she hung up. He retained his cloak, and Mrs. Johnson began to mount the stairs. 

As she took several steps upward, she heard him call to her, and turned.

The gentleman stood beside the portrait, a portrait that did not just resemble him, she realized, but was identical to him in every feature—strong chin, sharp, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and piercing eyes.

“Oh, Madam, if you would, you may tell her it’s,” he paused, almost playfully, as if there was an exceptionally good joke being played at her expense, and then finished smoothly “Barnabas Collins.”

Head swimming, an undertow of terror pulling at some atavistic level of her psyche, Mrs. Johnson obeyed instructions and reported to her employer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue borrowed from DS Episode 211, as transcribed by Danny Horn in his website "Dark Shadows Every Day," an incisive, insightful and often quite funny analysis of the entire series from the beginning of the Barnabas plot to its conclusion. The website, which is well worth the time of any fan, and makes a good companion to viewing the series, may be found here: https://darkshadowseveryday.com


	19. Remembrance of Things Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Victoria Winters. As the mistress of Collinwood prepares to meet a distant cousin from England, I have been sent to keep him company. To my astonishment, I found in the drawing room a man whose resemblance to a man long dead is startling. A man whose face and voice strike me as familiar, and yet who somehow frightens me…”

“Mr. Collins?”

Barnabas turned, and was face to face with his old friend Victoria Winters. Not as he had seen her last, but as he had first met her, in a dress that was, in his time, preposterous at best, obscene at worst. Now, of course, he was in her time, and he was the one garbed in a manner that could be deemed eccentric. He had shed his Inverness cape and left with it the walking stick, but he was appareled in what was, for this part of the Twentieth Century, an extremely formal manner. Still, wearing clothes that were at least somewhat analogous to those he had always worn was a genuine comfort.

Despite the emotions that were churned up by the sight of Victoria again in her youth, Barnabas smiled, a genuine happiness at being reunited with a true friend—even though this Victoria was currently a stranger to him.

“Miss Winters, I presume?”

“Yes,” she laughed merrily. He remembered that laugh from her time at the Old House, before Trask’s net had begun to encircle her. She offered her right hand, and he reflexively took it, bowed, and kissed the back of it.

“Where in England are you from?” She asked—innocently, he was sure. This Victoria was the same as the woman he’d known for a quarter of a century, and he knew better than most when she was trying to conceal her motives.

“Kent,” he answered easily. He had never been there, but reflected that he knew enough about it to bluff, only then remembering that he was nearly two centuries out of his own time. He smiled again, ironically this time, at the fact that the presence of Victoria and the familiarity of the room—albeit some of the furniture was different, and there were portraits that were obviously subsequent to his death—had lulled him into complacency. So let it be Kent, he decided.

“Is it nice?” She asked, so much like his friend.

He dilated on the peace and quiet of the County, hoping that some bucolic strain persisted to avoid giving him the lie. Barnabas was relieved at the entrance of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, until he rose, and turned to face her. 

The Mistress of Collinwood stared at him in fascination, as he did at her.

“Astonishing…” he murmured.

“Unbelievable,” she breathed.

“You look just like her,” Barnabas’s gaze softened. All the frenzied bloodlust and anger that had pumped through his veins at the docks these past evenings left him, and he stood in the presence of—but it could not be—Naomi Collins.

“Like who?” Victoria Winters’s voice asked him—or her employer, but Barnabas was so used to Victoria’s tones that he answered far more truthfully than he intended. 

“My Mother,” he almost whispered.

“I look like your mother?” Elizabeth recovered first. “But you look like the man in the painting—Barnabas Collins.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I am descended from him, the great-grandson of a younger brother who left for England to make his fortune. I bear my ancestor’s name.”

“Be careful how you pronounce that word, Mr. Collins,” A friendly voice, light, dry, ironic.

Barnabas turned to face the man, only to be met with another familiar face. The resemblance was far from perfect, and this saved Barnabas’s composure. This man was much younger than any recollection he had of his father, and the open smile was more than Joshua had ever displayed in front of his son. 

“Roger Collins,” the man said, extending his hand. Barnabas shook Roger’s hand in greeting, and smiled. He felt a comfort with this not-Joshua that he could not claim with the seeming revenant of Naomi.

“Mr. Collins thinks I resemble his mother, Roger,” Elizabeth declared.

“Does she, Mr.—oh, hang it—we can’t be ‘Mistering’ and ‘missusing’ each other all the time, can we? Especially when you start meeting all the other members of the family, like my boy David. I’m Roger, if that’s all right with you.”

“Only if you call me Barnabas.”

“Agreed. Liz?”

She laughed, and finally crossed to Barnabas, extending her hand, which he kissed.

“Elizabeth or Liz, Barnabas; whichever you prefer,” Roger suggested.

“Which do you prefer, Mrs. Stoddard?”

“Elizabeth, if you please. Roger’s my incorrigible little brother, so he shortens the name. But I quite like my name when it’s pronounced in full.”

He bowed to her solemnly and then quirked an eyebrow as he asked Roger.

“What was that you said about the pronunciation of ‘ancestors’?” 

“Oh, just a private joke. I was going on about the family history, and somehow managed to mangle the word.”

Elizabeth broke in with a pleased sisterly air of scoring a point off her brother. “I believe you called them ‘incestors’ Roger, didn’t you.”

His face a little reddened, Roger nonetheless shared in the joke, “Well, yes, I’m rather afraid I did. And now having heard from Barnabas that you resemble his mother, and observing for myself his remarkable likeness to that 18th Century portrait—well, I wonder if I didn’t have the right of it, after all.” 

“The Collins blood is strong,” Barnabas observed.

“And yet I don’t resemble anyone at all,” Roger smiled, “seems unfair somehow.”

“Well, there is a very old portrait of the patriarch himself—old Joshua, but in his younger days—that you have a great look of. It’s in England still.”

“Is it,” Roger mused, “I’m afraid I shouldn’t have asked. Nobody has much good to say of Joshua. Bit of an old tyrant, is all I can recall of him.”

“He had his virtues,” was all Barnabas replied.

“I think we should have a drink,” Roger rebounded, “I’m having a brandy; what’s your pleasure, Barnabas?”

“Sherry, thank you.”

“Of course; I have a nice amontillado.” As Roger poured the sherry, he asked the ladies what they would have. Both Elizabeth and Victoria opted to join Barnabas in sherry. When all were seated, Roger proposed a toast to the “Collins blood!”

Barnabas smiled, Victoria did as well. Only Elizabeth did not appear amused.

***  
Willie Loomis was having a quiet night in, arranging the kitchen for his own use. He had taken a smaller bedroom, one in which the fireplace was, mercifully, still functional. He had cleared out the flue, and had established that the smoke would escape harmlessly out of the chimney. The kitchen would need work, a lot of it, Willie realized, but plumbing was the main problem. The pipes were there, but needed to be checked thoroughly, as they had been added sometime in the 19th Century and not maintained since, as far as he could tell. If Barnabas allowed it, he could make the kitchen pretty comfortable, and the house too. 

In his more sane moments, he was still terrified of Barnabas. It was too easy, though, to remember the moments of kindness (or at least a lack of cruelty). Barnabas was imperious, but not unreasonable, at least most of the time. As he organized the cabinets, he froze as the front door to the Old House flew open and his master’s voice roared.

“WILLIE!!”

All the fear so carefully buried and rationalized away rose in Willie’s throat.

“WILLIE!!” The roar was louder, went on seemingly forever.

Willie ran into the foyer. 

“What’s wrong, Barnabas! Are you all right?”

The vampire grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. He shook Willie Loomis like a terrier worries a rat, and hurled the quaking man into the wall, leading Willie to pitch onto the lowest steps of the staircase.

Barnabas advanced, brandishing his cane. When he spoke, his voice was inhuman—cold and rasping, with an admixture of hatred and contempt Willie had never imagined a human voice expressing. As he tried to move, Willie reflected that, of course, Barnabas was not human.

“Is it true, Willie?”

“What, Barnabas?” the servant asked, “is what true?”

“That you assaulted Victoria and Carolyn.” The voice became almost normal, but hardened as he added, “is it true, Willie?”

“No, I never did, Barnabas! I flirted with them, and I was pushy—too pushy, I know that now. I scared them, Barnabas, but I apologized to them.”

Barnabas scowled. “Why the change of heart, Willie? Wasn’t it because Burke Devlin made you apologize?”

Willie answered, “He told me to, but he didn’t hafta, Barnabas. I didn’t want them to be scared of me no more. I don’t wanna scare nobody, Barnabas. Not when…”. He fell silent, an embarrassed look on his face.

The fury drained from Barnabas’s eyes, and his stance. He hung his cane up on the coatrack and helped his cowering servant to his feet. Calmly, reasonably, Barnabas posed one last question.

“Not when, you said, Willie—not when what?”

Trembling, Willie answered, “Not when I had learned what fear feels like, Barnabas.” Willie’s posture was abject, that of a dog fearing a blow or a kick. 

The vampire locked eyes with him, overpowering his will. Willie was freed from anxiety, yearning for comfort, for approval—from Barnabas. Anything seemed worth that approval, that comfort.

“Have you told me the full truth, Willie?”

“Oh, yeah, Barnabas. You know I’d never lie to you.” Willie smiled gently, and Barnabas returned the smile.

“I owe you an apology, Willie. I should not have assumed Mr. Devlin was telling me the truth. Do you think he was lying?”

“I dunno, Barnabas,” Willie replied, still floating, “he’s sweet on Vicki Winters, but I can’t imagine her lyin’, or Miss Carolyn, either. He coulda just assumed the worst, I guess.”

“Sit down, Willie; I’ll pour you a brandy. You deserve one for being so honest with me, and it will help you feel better.”

“Thanks, Barnabas,” Willie sighed contentedly as he sipped the drink, and as Barnabas gently squeezed his shoulder.

“I am sorry, Willie."

“’S okay, Barnabas. Hey, did ya meeting at Collinwood go ok?”

“Very much so, Willie. I found myself liking them very much.”

Willie chuckled. “Even Roger?”

With a smile, Barnabas answered, “Even Roger. After all, he urged Elizabeth to lease me this house with an option to buy upon completing the renovations. And she agreed.”

The servant was getting sleepy. “Tha’s nice, Barnabas. We can make this place really primo, ya know?”

“I am sure we can Willie. You should go to bed soon, and feel free to sleep in—we cannot start work until the papers are signed, and that will take a few days.”

“Thanks, Barnabas,” and Willie drifted upstairs.

As he found himself alone, Barnabas murmured, “I really must not assume Willie is lying to me. I must treat him as well as I am able.”

As the night drew on, he thought about the renewal that he and Willie would bring to the Old House, about the warmth which with he had been treated, and the welling up of feelings he had thought banished forever during his imprisonment. And yet—these distant relatives, so like others he had known—they evoked a desire to ensure their safety in him. At some level, he wanted to be a part of a family again. To be once more a Collins, despite all that had happened to him.

But the night was waning, and he had to feed. The docks would provide, he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I simply couldn’t resist; in episode 313, Roger and Joe Haskell are searching for David in the Collins family mausoleum at Eagle Hill Cemetery, and in a brilliant slip of the tongue, Louis Edmonds as Roger goes up and then recovers: “Some of my incestors—[turns to Joe Haskell, says sarcastically, mocking himself, “incestors”—some of my ancestors are buried here…”]
> 
> Also, Roger’s serving Barnabas amontillado is a salute to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” which was ...borrowed from... in the original series’ 1795 storyline.


	20. The Boy Blunders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is David Collins. My old abandoned house is being taken from me, and my friend Millicent too. My cousin Barnabas is changing everything, and I don't want to lose her. There's something strange about Cousin Barnabas, and I'm going to find out what!"

David Collins was not an easy boy. Oh, he wasn’t often cruel, as some children can be, nor did he bully smaller children. What he was could be easily seen, if you knew how to look for it: David was angry, and lonely, and frightened. David lived in a huge gothic pile two-thirds of which was closed off, and among the trappings of wealth. Like Willie Loomis, David learned to be afraid the hard way; his mother had trapped herself in a burning building—on purpose!—and had tried to keep him with her as she burned. Only Victoria Winters had saved him that ghastly night, and his father Roger had held him tightly, as if he was a precious thing, and not the son who had tried to kill his father only months before. 

When David asked, Roger had told David that he was forgiven, but David just couldn’t accept that his hostile, angry father could really love him. Only Cousin Millicent made life bearable, and she was dead.

Oh, she was pretty enough—she resembled his less kind cousin Carolyn, but unlike Carolyn, Millicent always made time for him, sang songs and told him stories. He loved Millicent, but she was, well, she was a ghost. And she lived in the Old House, which now belonged to Cousin Barnabas. Barnabas was okay, David thought; he smiled kindly and brought little treats to Collinwood, and even had that Wille Loomis make hot chocolate one night, when he took David around the ruined Old House, and showed him the blueprints for the renovation. David liked Barnabas just fine that night—Willie made great hot chocolate, the blueprints were like a window into the past, and even Father was impressed.

“I didn’t know Barnabas was so avuncular, David,” he had remarked pleasantly.

David didn’t mind Cousin Barnabas having the Old House during the day, because Cousin Millicent only came out at night, and it was the loss of his access to his friend that made him sad. So when Barnabas would leave the house, in his funny coat-cape, David could sneak back into his private paradise, and talk, or play, or sing with Millicent. 

But then he got caught.

Willie took him right out of the house, and locked him out. Oh, he got back in, but then Barnabas found him, and he put him out, too. This made David less scared and less lonely, but far more angry. He broke in through the back door, and traced his way back to the parlor, and had a lovely talk with Millicent, all about Willie, and then—why, then Cousin Barnabas came in and found David all alone. (David didn’t mind Millicent disappearing; he was afraid Barnabas would somehow banish her, with that creepy air of self-confidence he exuded.)

But he did mind not being allowed in, and he told Barnabas so, in a spirited fashion. Barnabas looked at him curiously, as if he were a bug under the lens of a microscope, and that made David really mad. And that’s when David made his big mistake.

“You don’t want me to see her!” he shouted. “You want her for yourself! But she protects me—and Vicki too!”

“Who is it that you think I want all for myself, David?” the poised man asked, gesturing David to the sofa as he sat in his wing chair.

“Cousin Millicent, of course!”

“Cousin Millicent?” Barnabas remained poised, but his brow furrowed. 

“Yes—she died a hundred and fifty years ago!”

“A trifle more than that, in fact,” Barnabas sounded as if he was talking to himself and not to David.

The boy’s eyes widened. “You know her,” he said with a certainty that took the older man by surprise. “When she told me about you, I thought she meant your ancestor, the one in the portrait.”

“That’s all she could have meant, David. I only know of her because I know the family history.”

‘You’re lying!” David declared. “She loved you, and you saw her die, didn’t you?”

The man recoiled; David liked that, it made him feel in charge—he was winning this fight with an adult, and he relished it. He went on:

“But that would make you a hundred and fifty years old!” David smiled, and in a passably good imitation of Barnabas’s own solemn tones, added “a trifle more than that, in fact.”

That’s when the boy noticed that his cousin was far from amused. His eyes darkened, and his stillness became that of a cat confronted by a surprisingly audacious mouse. And as Barnabas’s eyes fixed him, David realized the import of his words, and began to tremble.

“But you can’t be that old,” he stammered, rising from the sofa, and backing away from Barnabas, still seated, eyes boring into David’s soul.

“To be that old, you’d…you’d have to be a ghost!”

“Which I clearly am not; we’ve shaken hands, David, have we not.” Barnabas rose from his chair, and his smile was no longer kind or avuncular.

“And you can’t be a zombie,” the boy mused, still walking backwards away from Barnabas. The looming figure in the black suit took another step, halving the distance between them.

Illumination flooded David’s mind.

“You’re like Dracula!” he gasped, turning white with terror.

“Who?” Barnabas was clearly puzzled. But how could anybody not have heard of Dracula? Unless he was—

“You’re a vampire!” he hollered, and he turned and ran in utter panic, ignoring Barnabas’s cry, urging him to come back. Barnabas lunged to the door, and saw the boy dodge Willie’s effort to catch him. The lad disappeared into the woods.

“Should I go after him, Barnabas?” Willie asked.

“No. What could we conceivably do with him?”

“I dunno. You don’t want to hurt him, do you?”

“Of course not, Willie. But I hardly want him spreading tales of the vampire next door. Leave me; I need to think.”

***

Barnabas sat alone in the parlor. He rose, and faced the fireplace. Above it stood a fading portrait, a family group. Joshua, old but still vigorous, Naomi, happy in the peaceful years, Angelique, so very beautiful, a smiling Abigail, and the Forbeses.

Millicent. 

Millicent, protecting the Collins family, and Victoria?

He rose from his chair.

“How I wish you had been the protector of the Collinses, Millicent. You didn’t protect me; nobody did.”

Millicent’s pretty face in the portrait mocked him by its silence.

“I was a Collins. Why didn’t you protect me? Where were you when I was turned into something my own father loathed? If his ghost is here with yours — tell him I’ve come home. I claim this house as mine — and whatever power you or he may have is ended. I am free now, and alive! The chains with which he bound me are broken, and I’ve returned to live the life I never had.”

He looked around the ruined, ancient house.

“Whatever that might be,” he concluded, and, striding to the door, pulled his new Inverness cape around him.

Looking over what was once his home, he met Millicent’s painted eyes.

“I promise you this, Cousin Millicent: I will not shed Collins blood, not even David’s. I will find a way to stop him from endangering me, but I will not kill him. There must be another way, and I will find it!”

All the optimism that had surged through him in planning the renovation of his home, fled from him. He raised his chin, determined, and scanned the portrait one last time. Even in his rage and fear at the possible consequences of David’s betrayal, he remembered his father’s parting words to him, his mother’s embrace, his children.

“Too rash,” he murmured. “I will save David from himself, and safeguard my home and my person. I will not despair! I did love you, Millicent, just not as you wanted me to. If the others are near you, give all my love to long ago.”

He left for the docks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Dialogue borrowed from Episode 212, as preserved by Danny Horn on his invaluable website "Dark Shadows Every Day.": https://darkshadowseveryday.com/2013/09/04/episode-212/


	21. Mercy and the Bat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Victoria Winters. Tonight, a young boy will know terror--the terror of a nightmare that does not end when he awakes, but pursues him into wakefulness, into danger, and into the arms of a father he has never brought himself to trust, let alone love."

The clock at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church chimed one; the cold night air focused Barnabas, who, having fed, was ready to consider how to address the matter of little David Collins. He walked though the town, capecoat flapping in the rising wind, and paused to savor the freshening gusts across his face and the moonlight.

So different from his vile imprisonment for well over a century! He had been ready for death, reconciled to it, but for his own family to sentence him to eternal agony—he fought the anger down yet again. He once again pictured that last meeting with his parents, his sister and his own children. He did not know who had pinned him to the coffin, but knew from the tears that had been shed, the embraces that had been shared, that it was an error on somebody’s part. Perhaps his father, perhaps Bramwell, perhaps another.

He had to forgive.

They had all, each of then—even his own father, so hard to know for so much of his life—loved him. And he had loved them. He would not sully that sweet pain, that agonizing joy, of discovering that even as the monster he had been made, his family had still loved him.

How could he not forgive them in turn?

And so young David must live.

After all, the boy was only nine years old; he had barely begun to taste life, its joys, its sorrows. When the curse had fallen upon him, Barnabas had led a life—oh, not a full, rich one like Joshua at 80, but still, he had loved his wife for a quarter of a century, seen his children reach adulthood—had he died naturally, he would have regrets, but would have thought his life a good one.

David did not deserve to die, danger though the child presented to him. And since he could not die, he must be discredited. He could imagine the lad tale-bearing to his father that “Cousin Barnabas” was a vampire, and Roger loftily laughing the matter away. In fact, he was sure that just that had occurred that very evening, or, if not, it would take place the next day. Which gave him an idea.

Roger was too cynical, Elizabeth too practical, to take a tale of vampirism seriously. They were people of the mid-Twentieth Century, not Barnabas’s Eighteenth Century, when such supernatural musings could be given credence. (After all, Victoria Winters had nearly been hanged based on such a tale, and that tale had been true, just not the young governess’ asserted responsibility.). But by 1967, the will to believe had been replaced by the Will Not to Believe, and therein lay Barnabas’s opportunity: He would ensure that David’s story was so richly colored, so absurd, that nobody would believe the boy. 

***  
The bat flew across the little fishing town, swooping on the wings of the wind, as it soared to the Great House. Through an open window it flew, and, perched in the vaulted ceiling of the drawing room, it was treated to a conversation between brother, sister, and governess.

“Liz, I’m sorry; I realize David’s upset, but what can we do? He’s nine years old, of course he has nightmares.”

“Roger, he screamed so loudly that he woke not just me and Vicki, but Carolyn too. Don’t you think that’s worth getting help for?”

“He’s still recovering from that horror with his mother. Naturally he’s susceptible to bad dreams. I don’t believe the boy’s abnormal, do you, Miss Winters?”

“No, I don’t, Mr. Collins. You’re right to say he’s been traumatized—his mother wouldn’t let him go, even when he realized she was going to burn them both alive—but he’s coping as well as anyone could reasonably expect.”

“I agree,” Roger affirmed. Before he could say anything more, Elizabeth broke in.

“That’s quite the change for you, Roger. You spent most of the past year arguing that David needed to be sent away for treatment.”

“I was wrong!” Roger’s voice lost its patrician hauteur. “I was wrong about the boy, and I’m ashamed that I didn’t know better. But I do now, and I mean to be a real father to David.”

“Perhaps we should take his claims more seriously, then?” From her tone, Elizabeth could have been scoring a debater’s point, or could have been coming around to David’s perspective. 

He listened to Roger’s defense of himself, and the ridiculousness of a vampire at Collinwood. On balance, their skepticism outweighed their superstitious tendencies, but that was not sufficient.

The bat disappeared from the ceiling, and found itself on the eaves outside David’s bedroom. Roger had reacted as he’d expected, but Elizabeth seemed torn. No, David must be shown to be an unreliable witness. 

The bat became a man, or, rather, a man clinging to a high window with a narrow, virtually non-existent ledge. With the whistling wind, Barnabas shook the panes loudly enough to startle the boy awake. As David reared up, and turned to the window, he saw “Cousin Barnabas” splayed out against the window, seemingly without support, jaws open, fangs extruded.

“No!” The boy shrieked, and backed away from the window, trembling. As his eyes were riveted to the vampire like a rabbit to an encroaching stoat, David saw the man surrounded by mist, and then, smoothly, easily, standing inside the house on the window casement.

At the sight of David’s open terror, tears flowing down his face, Barnabas’s conscience smote his heart. The boy so resembled the young Daniel! But Barnabas stonily reminded himself that at least this way, the boy could live. 

David’s horror grew as the man diminished, and a large bat swooped down at him. He screamed as the bat’s wings brushed against his hair, and flinging the door open, ran stumbling through the hall, shrieking as the bat pursued him.

The terrified child called for his father, for Miss Winters, for Aunt Elizabeth, as the bat pursued it. As footsteps rang on the steps of the Great Staircase, the bat broke off pursuit, and flew off into the night.

Roger took the stairs like the athlete he had been at Choate. David’s stumbling run brought him into his father’s arms just as Roger reached the landing. Roger picked his son up in his arms, and held him to his chest.

“It’s all right, David, it’s all right now,” his father’s voice was warm, soothing. David’s tears splashed his father’s face, and Roger bore him down to the drawing room, where Aunt Elizabeth and Miss Winters were waiting. 

Roger placed the boy on the couch, and wrapped him in a warm blanket. 

“A very small glass of brandy, please, Miss Winters,” he requested, keeping his tone normal, to reassure the boy. Victoria obliged, despite Elizabeth’s upraised eyebrow, but the two women shared an appreciative glance when Roger’s voice, warm with solicitude, implored David to “tell us everything that happened, son.”

David’s recitation made very little sense. Barnabas, clinging to the walls of the Great House, and passing through the window without damaging it? A bat, pursuing David through the corridors of the second floor? 

But Roger knew better than to try to talk David out of his nightmare. He simply comforted the boy, made him drink the rest of the little glass of brandy, and told David that he’d be safe that night because David would sleep in his, Roger’s, room. 

“Wont that be nice?” Roger asked.

As the boy felt the effect of the brandy, he felt less scared, and his father’s comfort made him sleepy and a little happy.

“I’ll carry you upstairs, son,” Roger said, and David nodded as he was lifted up again. As they left, he calmly asked his sister to make that call tomorrow—the one she’d suggested.

Left alone, Elizabeth and Victoria looked at each other with some astonishment.

“I don’t believe it,” Elizabeth murmured.

“I do, but I didn’t expect him to handle it so well.”

Elizabeth smiled, her happiness at her brother’s progress edging out her worries about David for the moment.

“Vicki,” she asked, “Would you get me the name Doctor Woodard recommended, so I can call in the morning.

“It’s in my purse, Mrs. Stoddard.” The governess sought out her address book, found it, and crossed to the desk to write out the information. She then returned to Elizabeth and handed her the carefully copied out slip.

Elizabeth looked it over carefully, and read it aloud. “Dr. Julian Hoffman, Director, Windcliffe Sanitarium. We’ll call him in the morning, Vickie.”

“Yes, Mrs. Stoddard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter as a Christmas gift for those who have been kind enough to read. Comments are very welcome as I am new to writing this fandom


	22. Doctor Hoffman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Victoria Winters. My charge, young David Collins, lives in abject terror, a terror he claims is caused by the distant cousin now repairing and restoring the old Collins Mansion on the estate. That cousin, an urbane, charming man has shown the boy nothing but kindness and concern, and my every instinct says he is trustworthy. And yet—we cannot know what ails David unless the doctor from Windcliff—Julius Hoffman—is able to get him to speak.”

Roger Collins paced the flagged stones at the entrance of the Great House like a caged lion. The doctor was to arrive at 11:45, and it was almost noon now. Where in blazes was the man? Roger fought to keep his anxiety from reaching his face. 

When was it that his feelings for his son had changed so? Was it when Laura first returned and stated her intention to take the boy with her? No; his competitive nature, or possibly his possessive instinct had been roused by Laura’s demand, but his heart had remained untouched. 

So soon after the humiliating admission to Burke Devlin, and the man’s condescending forgiveness, Roger could not have borne to have been trounced again, and especially not by the roving wife he was sure had slept with Devlin.

Was David even his son? The question had become academic to Roger. Whoever had planted the seed in Laura, David was his son now. The small, still form Victoria Winters had brought back from the Great House after Laura's horrific self-immolation had reeked of smoke, and his little tweed jacket had been singed at the shoulder. When he had met Victoria and taken the boy from her, David had snuggled into Roger’s shoulder and neck, and murmured “Father.” 

That was when the Roger’s ambivalence toward his son broke, and the long suppressed paternal feelings spilled out into the open. He was not afraid of the awkwardness of David’s bizarre accusations against poor Barnabas, or how it made the family look; he simply felt an animal fear that the child he now knew that he loved was—mad.

The heavy brass knocker echoed against the stout old doors. Roger opened it immediately, hope flaring in his eyes, only to die when he beheld a middle-aged woman with red hair and a green suit at the door.

“Yes?” he inquired listlessly.

“Are you all right?” The woman’s voice was husky, with a slight touch of a drawl.

“I did not mean to be discourteous,” Roger forced out, “but I am waiting for a doctor to visit my son. He’s quite ill, I’m afraid.”

The woman’s green eyes—catlike, Roger could not help but notice—widened, and her mobile features expressed a depth of sympathy he would not have expected her angular, strong face to be capable of.

“I’m Doctor Hoffman,” she advised him, her tones warm but firm.

Roger cocked his head at an angle.

“Doctor Woodard said we should expect a man.”

“A man?” In her astonishment, her voice rose in what was almost a quacking sound.

“Dr. Julius Hoffman, he said.”

She smiled thinly. 

“Dave Woodard and I have known each other since medical school. I’m pretty sure he knows that I’m not a man. I’m Doctor Julia Hoffman.”

“Oh, dear lord,” Roger murmured, “Mrs Johnson took the message. The damned fool probably assumed that any doctor would have to be a man. I’m terribly sorry. Won’t you come in and see my son?”

“Of course, Mr. Collins,” Her smile was quite charming now, reassuring, even. “Please lead the way.”

Before she would go to see David, Dr. Hoffman asked Roger a great many questions, as well as posing quite a few to Elizabeth and Victoria. Roger candidly admitted the bad feeling between him and David for nearly two years, and described David’s effort to cause his car to crash. Victoria described the boy’s abduction by his mother, and Elizabeth described his occasional strange behavior and tales of a ghost in the Old House. Finally, the fear of cousin Barnabas, and David’s breakdown were told to her.

“He’s clearly had his difficulties, but there are some encouraging points,” Dr. Hoffman opined. 

“Such as?” Roger could not help himself.

“He experienced the ghost sightings as positive, friendly even. That suggests he doesn’t yet see the world as fundamentally hostile—Millicent could even be as ordinary a thing as an imaginary friend. And he was functioning surprisingly well after the trauma of his mother’s suicide and her attempt to kill him along with her. That suggests a great latent resilience.” 

“I hope so, doctor,” Roger answered. “You’re very encouraging. Are you ready to see David, do you think?”

She nodded. “Miss Winters, would you take me up to him?”

“Of course,” the governess replied, and the doctor followed her up the stairs. A quarter hour later, Victoria returned alone. 

***  
The boy was both traumatized and terrified, Julia realized, but not mad. She had spent two hours with him, she realized, as the mantle clock in his room chimed the hour, and she realized that she would have to stay for some time to help him. 

She didn’t mind these in-residence cases; sometimes being in the patient’s home greatly facilitated the therapeutic process. Certainly it enabled her to grasp the environmental effects on the child, which in this case reflected a series of traumas, on an ascending arc, that had complicated the boy’s adjustment.

But it was the hypnosis that had revealed the most. David fully, clearly believed that his distant cousin was a vampire. He did not believe it in a way that was typical of children’s irrational fears, but rather like an adult who had carefully weighed the evidence and made a judgment that most adults could not accept, because it contravened scientific reality as envisioned by lay people.

Julia was not so blinkered. She was aware of the strange aberrations nature could produce, of the often monstrous variety of phenomena in the world that gave rise to superstitions throughout all countries. She was also keenly aware of the writings of Jung, and of those of Summers and Calmet.

Julia had long suspected that vampirism existed, but as an illness, a sickness of the blood. As a hematologist as well as a psychiatrist, she had long theorized that the malignant creatures of myth were in fact victims of organic physical defects that could only be found and treated through cutting edge research, research that she hoped to one day undertake. That such persons were exceedingly rare—as rare as a unicorn—did not mean that there was no truth to the old myths and the folklore.

That day might now have come, she reflected.

Important as it was to cure poor David, she was burning with curiosity to meet Barnabas Collins.

She left the sleeping boy (her post-hypnotic suggestion should calm him to some extent, when he awoke in a few hours), and went downstairs to inform the Collinses that she would have to stay for some time, and that she required to meet the family.

“All of them? Even Barnabas?” Roger inquired.

“Especially Barnabas,” She replied. “Ideally, we could pass it off as a social occasion, so I could observe the interactions of everyone in the family with David.”

“Would cocktails this evening work?” Elizabeth proposed.

“I think that would be perfect,” Doctor Hoffman agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why the references to "Julius Hoffman"? Well, according to the Dark Shadows Wiki, "The character of Dr. Julia Hoffman was originally intended to be a male character. Early script drafts identified the character simply as Dr. Hoffman, "Dr. J. Hoffman" or "Dr. Julian Hoffman." In one issue of the Gold Key comic book series, an amnesiac Barnabas believes himself to be "Jules Hoffman." On the same page, we are informed that "[I]n an interview that can be found on disc 108 of the Complete Original Series writer Joe Caldwell (who wrote the episode Julia debuted in) recounts a story where he suggested the name Julius Hoffman, to which producer Bob Costello jokingly remarked "Julia Hoffman", which Dan [Curtis] went with." Between these historical points in the character's creation, it also seemed like a good opportunity to highlight the challenges from sexist assumptions Julia would be facing in 1967.


	23. The Lady and the Unicorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Victoria Winters. The Great House at Collinwood is merry tonight. A cocktail party is enlivening the vast empty spaces, filling them with light, and music, chatter, and something more. Tonight a woman and a man are circling each other, as if each is hunting the other. But, in this strange dance, which is the predator, and which the prey?

The cocktail party was in full swing by eight o’clock. Along with Roger and Elizabeth, Carolyn and Victoria played host, mingling with the guests, chatting with the shy, drawing out the reserved. Surprisingly, Jason McGuire was doing his part too, in sparkling form, charming Hannah Stokes, and bearing the brunt of her badinage. 

Burke Devlin was normally in evidence wherever Victoria stood, but assisted her in her efforts to make the party “go.” 

Carolyn winced a little to see Joe Haskell flaunting Maggie Evans on his arm. The young sailor was radiating contentment, and Maggie’s occasionally caustic asides seemed to have vanished as completely as her peroxide bottle job. Maggie’s father, the normally irascible Sam Evans, replaced McGuire as a sparring partner for Hannah Stokes, whose brother was enthusiastically denouncing the poor research of a colleague in the causes of losses in the “so-called Devil’s Triangle.” Barely hanging on, McGuire hunkered down under the Professor’s erudite discourse, tying the Triangle in with Aaron Burr, and Jason cast looks seeking rescue from Elizabeth, who placidly pretended to not see them.

As David descended the stair, a little nervously, the arcs of his father and of Burke Devlin, who had a friendship with the boy, intersected. The two former friends played it off as if nothing had ever interrupted their closeness. Their ease in each other’s presence relaxed some of the tension around David, and he began to enjoy his ginger ale and the party.

Julia Hoffman was everywhere, green eyes and a green cocktail dress to match. When the doors opened again at a little after eight-thirty, she was the first to pick out the dark-browed, dark-eyed newcomer in the elegant, if antiquated, cape, which he quietly hung up. A handsome man, Julia thought, but was he what she had been seeking for so long?

David’s relaxed posture stiffened a bit at the sight of his “cousin.” As Barnabas made his way into the room, he smiled pleasantly, and put out a hand to the boy, turning the triangle of father, possible father, and son into a quadrilateral.

“David!” Barnabas greeted the boy, “I am so very pleased to see you looking so well restored!”

“Thank you, Cousin Barnabas,” the boy replied.

“I am so sorry our last visit ended with you being taken unwell. But I am gratified that you are so much more yourself.”

Julia found the man’s voice charming, wringing unconscious responses of desire from her. “So seductive,” she thought, despite the dark hollows under his eyes, the predatory set to those deep set orbs themselves. She had not expected the mellifluous voice, more like that of a Shakespearian actor than a voice for everyday use.

She reminded herself that if her suspicions were correct, all of these attributes could be used to ensnare her in a quite fatal way. With a smile that did not light her eyes, Julia recognized that these features and her reaction to them could be low-level, and thus untrustworthy, proof that her theory was correct. Of course, she would have to progress further than she had to know if she was functioning as the clinical scientist she knew herself to be, or as an enchanted maiden (well, hardly that!), or a damsel in distress at the sight of a fabled beast of legend.

She remembered the words of Danton, and murmured them to herself: “de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!" Though her voice was low, Barnabas Collins turned to her. As her smile broadened, and as she approached the man, his expression was one of startlement, almost bewilderment. Joining the little group, Julia extended her hand to him, and he bowed over it, kissing it formally, if tentatively.

“Why, Mr. Collins,” she greeted him, what a delightfully warm welcome! And here I was thinking from your look of horror that you owed me money!”

Roger and Burke laughed; David smiled, and Barnabas looked—oddly, for so sophisticated a man—abashed. He recovered quickly, of course.

“Are you by any chance related to the du Prés family?” His inquiry was quite solemn.

“No, I’m a Hoffman from Forest Hills. That’s in New York City—Queens. But I’ve been in Maine for over 10 years, so I think I’m allowed to stay.”

“Of course, Doctor Hoffman!” Roger assented.

“Doctor Hoffman?” Barnabas was curious.

“Yes, that’s right. I’ve been visiting the family and getting to know them, right, David?”

The boy smiled. “Yes, that’s right,” he agreed.

“Excellent,” Barnabas concurred. “May I ask what kind of Doctor you are?”

“Oh, I dabble, you know. I do a fair amount with children, and I have a sub-specialization in disorders of the blood.”

Her composure regained, she took a cigarette from her purse; Devlin’s lighter sought and lit the cigarette before Roger had ignited his own.

“Fast work, Devlin,” Roger deadpanned.

“Only way to get ahead, Collins.” Devlin’s riposte was equally dry. The two men caught each other’s expressions, and they laughed at the same time. 

With Julia ensconced between the two men, Barnabas found himself being introduced by Victoria Winters to her friend Maggie Evans. Miss Evans, the daughter of the artist Barnabas had (on Roger’s recommendation) hired to paint a portrait of himself in the Old House, a portrait of a contemporary man, or at least the man he was today, against the backdrop of the present day. It tickled Barnabas’s vanity to recreate the original portrait in a modern milieu, and Evans was doing a superb job.

But meeting the man’s daughter came with a shock to Barnabas; in yet another of the strange parallels he had encountered in this new era, Maggie Evans bore a striking resemblance to Josette, his own intended bride, who had married Jeremiah, only to be widowed by Barnabas’s killing his uncle in their ill-fated duel.

Seeing this simulacrum of Josette stirred nothing in Barnabas; a quarter of a century with his long-lost Angelique had freed him from any interest in the slip of a girl he might have married. Still, yet another startling resemblance was . . . perturbing, coming so soon after meeting Doctor Hoffman, who so resembled Countess Natalie, and yet was so unlike her. Oh, she had the Countess’s arrogance, to be sure, but she seemed warmer, and her arrogance appeared to be based on her own achievements and knowledge, not her social class.

Perhaps, Barnabas thought, but could he be so sure? Granted, he had traduced the Countess in court back in 1796—thus helping to save Victoria Winters from the scaffold—but what would the Countess have thought of it all? A clever rescue of an innocent, or an affront beyond bearing?

Maggie Evans came over to him, and smilingly teased, “Mr. Collins, why not save the money you’re paying my Pop and just ask Mrs. Stoddard for that portrait over there—it’s you to the life!”

Julia Hoffman had been so busy viewing the interactions, especially those involving David, that she had not even glanced at the portraits. It was the work of a second for her to see that Maggie was right—the ancestor in the portrait could have been taken from the man chatting easily with Miss Evans. Raising her silver cigarette lighter to ignite her next cigarette, she angled the lighter subtly, and saw that it reflected Maggie perfectly clearly, but, from the reflection, that she appeared to be entirely alone.

She turned just enough to check that Maggie was still accompanied by Barnabas, and on seeing that she in fact was, turned again, replacing the lighter with her compact, and angling it as if to fix her face, repeated the experiment.

Once again, despite the compact’s wider field of vision, Maggie Evans appeared to be standing alone in isolation. Barnabas Collins, who was patently in her line of vision, was completely invisible to the mirror.

The clues were sufficient for her: the portrait, over a hundred and seventy years old, of a man who was present in the room in 1967; the lack of any reflection of that same man in either silver or mirrored glass; and, finally, the unprecedented sexual desire—no, longing—that this man’s presence elicited from her. She was not ordinarily lubricious, but Barnabas Collins’s fascination made her tremble. Julia turned toward the man—if man he was—and found that he was watching her closely, standing preternaturally still.

Fascinated as she was with him, he seemed to be memorizing her every feature, marking her down in his predatory eyes.

She was quite sure that she had found her unicorn at last. But the unicorn, despite its beauty and allure, was famous, in scripture, at least, as a dangerous, sometimes quite lethal, beast.

It was time for her to withdraw; to think; to plan.

The cause of the boy’s trauma was susceptible of verifying, and even of amelioration.

But Julia knew herself to be at graver risk than ever before in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some characters from the early and later epochs of the original series turn up, and one or two from another Parallel Time.


	24. The Trap and the Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Julia Hoffman. I have been brought to the Great House to treat a disturbed boy. But, to my fascination and my horror, I have discovered that the great opportunity I have so long sought may imperil my very sanity, or even my life!”

The room was in darkness, the silhouette of its occupant curled under blankets. The moonless night in no way hindered his sight, but would make him harder to spot. To dissolve through the cold window panes was the work of but a moment, to spring on the helpless sleeper almost as quickly—he snarled as he found nothing but artfully crumpled pillows creating a simulacrum of a recumbent form.

A trap! He knew it instantly, and rose to his feet.

But Julia Hoffman was already there, the agonizing cross uplifted in her hand. Worse, she had come out from her closet, and had quite effectively blocked his escape to either door or window. He could not transform, did not dare to rush her—he was helpless.

“Put it away, please put it away!” He strove to keep his voice level, but could hear the pleading intonation despite his efforts.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Collins,” the Doctor replied, a triumphant smile etched on her features, “After all, you did come here to kill me.”

Genuinely affronted, Barnabas backed to the wall but answered spiritedly. 

“I most certainly did not! I deplore killing, except when absolutely necessary.”

“As in the case of someone who has discovered your secret?” She taunted him.

“I don’t need to kill you to keep you from sharing my secret,” he answered carefully, “I would have bitten you, and made you forget that you knew it at all.”

“And that’s all you would have done?” Her skepticism blazed from her sharp eyes—pretty eyes, he could not reflect, though not so pretty as Angelique’s had been. Saddened by the unexpected prickling of grief, he sat heavily on the bed.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” The taunting and triumph were gone now.

“A—a memory,” he answered, “a memory of a time when I was free and happy. Please put the cross away—it hurts just by its presence.”

“I don’t believe I can entirely trust you yet, Mr. Collins. But we do need to talk, and I don’t want to harm you. I want to help you.”

“The only way you can help me, Doctor, is to leave me alone.”

“And let you go on killing?”

“There will be no more killing,” he said deliberately. “I had been locked in my coffin—awake, with a cross above me—for well over a century, and I was maddened when I was finally free. But then I met Elizabeth and Roger.”

“And?”

“So like my parents, and yet so different. So accepting of me as their cousin—”

“I’m sure the portrait helped.”

He smiled, a real smile, despite the pain the cross inflicted on him. “No doubt,” he agreed, “but they were glad to see me, to welcome me, and I felt—I felt like Barnabas Collins again, and not a depraved murderous ghoul.”

“And?”

“And I have not killed since then. I take a little, give the poor woman a pleasant dream and a feeling of happiness, and leave her in a safe place.”

“How magnanimous of you.” Her tone was dry.

“I know it is evil! Do you think I chose this existence! Do you think anyone would choose this existence!”

“People do, you know.” She replied coolly, “Summers documents it in his studies.”

“Summers?”

“Montague Summers, the most prolific researcher into vampirism of this century. Apparently, there are men who are drawn to the power your condition brings with it, and who crave eternal life—”

Barnabas Collins looked ill. “How can they?” He whispered. “It is not eternal life, but eternal death—to be a cold corpse, borrowing warmth and life from the truly living." His voice rose in patently sincere loathing. "How can anyone find the power of hurting, and possibly killing, innocents, pleasurable—and don’t mention de Sade to me, Doctor Hoffman—his bestial nature was well known even in my warm days!” 

Julia smiled, and dropped the cross, on its long chain, down into her nightdress.

Barnabas raised an eyebrow, even as he breathed a sigh of relief. They sat silently together for a time.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

“You may have more to thank me for than putting away the cross.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I told you that there is a chance—not a certainty, but a very real chance—that I might be able to cure you?”

Barnabas’s eyes gleamed for an instant, then faded. 

“How can this be? What happened to me was a curse—a supernatural event—how can medicine cure that?”

“However the curse came upon you, it made physical changes to your body. Those changes have causes, and they can—possibly—be reversed. Would you be willing to try?”

“How sure are you that it could work?”

“Very. There could be delays, there could be failures. But I firmly believe that the chances are good—quite good—that we could restore your body to that of a normal human being.”

“You offer me a miracle.”

“No. I offer you modern science. I am an expert in blood disorders, and based on the one piece of evidence I have seen—a vial drawn from a vampire’s victim in Sumatra—the blood cells of the vampire are different from that of a normal human. That is our starting point.”

“A thin reed,” he mused, but raised his hand when she sought to argue the point. “A thin reed, but perhaps worth the hazards.”

“What hazards do you fear,” She asked, “Death?”

“No, Doctor. I do not fear death. I would welcome it, as opposed to my current existence. But if I could indeed be granted life—true life—to live out my interrupted days, and to be free of this evil—it is worth the risks that I do fear.”

“But what are they, Barnabas?” So moved was he that he did not even notice her use of his first name.

“Most of all, failure, and the death of hope. But I have read of vampires who age and decay, but cannot die, of those who are caught forever between life and death, and know only unending pain. I fear that.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Good. Then hear and agree to my one condition: if your efforts fail, and I am reduced to such circumstances, you will yourself pound the merciful stake into my heart, or see that it is done for me. Agreed?”

“Agreed. But you must agree that unless you are so affected, I am the judge of what constitutes failure—when there are no more clues to follow, or means to attempt. Agreed?”

The vampire reached out his hand, and she took it in hers.

“Agreed,” he declared.

The clock on her mantlepiece struck.

“Doctor,” he started, “I have been here too long; if my presence is discovered here, you will be compromised.”

She smiled, astonished at his solicitude for her reputation.

"A man of your time," she gibed, smiling.

"And a realist, Doctor. Scandal would harm us both." His air of severity was not entirely convincing.

“Shall we meet tomorrow evening at the Old House?”

“Yes,” he consented, “Good night, Doctor.”

“Good night, Mr. Collins.”

Before she could take in the fact, he had already vanished.

Julia shivered a little at the risk she had run. Too excited to go to sleep, she lit a cigarette. She walked to the window, opened it, and gazed upon the Estate, her eyes drawn by the bulk of the Old House. As she smoked, she heard the chittering of a small creature--a bat perhaps.

Amused by her own fancy, she answered the creature. "Yes, Barnabas, I'll go to bed in just a few minutes." 

As she stubbed out her cigarette, the bat chittered again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I see it, Barnabas's years with Angelique and his maturity tempered him--no obsessive infatuation with Josette, and his long and successful marriage made him realistic about love. So, in this parallel time, he has considerably more internal resources to deal with the horror of his condition.


	25. The Experiment (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My name is Victoria Winters. The Great House at Collinwood has been the site of a reception, a cocktail party welcoming Dr. Julia Hoffman to the area. Barnabas Collins, the distant cousin newly in residence at the Old House, which he is restoring at his own expense, seems fascinated by the Doctor, dancing attendance on her, or, when speaking with others, slyly glancing in her direction. Perhaps it is my growing relationship with Burke turning me romantic, but I wonder if Barnabas thinks to sweep the Doctor off her feet!"

Barnabas Collins surveyed the basement of the Old House with grim satisfaction. She had been bringing the filled syringe to him in the parlor, but he had wanted to see what she had done to his house.

All along the main open space, retorts, beakers, and strange alchemical apparatus were clustered in groups that meant nothing to him. The more modern equipment intrigued his curiosity while increasing his nervousness. Strange boxes with glass screens, containing electrical impulses somehow, and by that fearsome power etching strange patterns across the glass, dancing images that conveyed nothing to him. The basement was crowded with such things, and Barnabas felt his suzerainity of his home eclipsed. That the laboratory was meticulously organized by Dr. Hoffman for her own purposes was clear. Even more so was that she was a woman of iron determination. How else could she have transformed the space so quickly? 

Dare he trust her?

After six weeks of nightly injections he still was unsure. 

“What do you think of it, Barnabas?” Her voice came from behind her; he turned to meet her.

He smiled tautly.

“I am reminded of Frankenstein, my dear Doctor,” he replied.

“Frankenstein?” Her usually sultry voice rose to an indignant quack; Barnabas’s smile broadened without his awareness of the fact.

“The last book I read in my life, Doctor. Or started to read, I should say. I just finished it a few days ago. Strange to start a book in beginning the Nineteenth Century and to finish it in the middle of the Twentieth.”

“Yes, that must be a strange feel—wait a minute, Barnabas; Frankenstein was published the year you—”

“Died, Doctor? Just so. But it was not published in America prior to my death.”

“Then how could you have—?”

He chuckled then, warming her, making her want him. The erotic frisson she felt was delightful, if more than a little improper for a doctor to feel for her patient. 

“You do not understand publishing in the Nineteenth Century, Doctor Hoffman. Books published in England or on the Continent were brought to America on clipper ships, and whoever first registered a copyright could print with impunity.”

“And?”

“The Collins fortune was not built entirely on fish, my dear Doctor. My father had his ships bring books over in crates, and seized the copyright from the authors and their publishers. And, of course, gave his son copies of any books he wanted to read.”

“Including Frankenstein?”

“Just so,” he repeated, the curiously formal, categorical affirmance of which he was so fond.

“Are you ready for the injection?” 

“No,” he replied, “but I must do it in any event, if I hope to truly live again.” He removed his smoking jacket and sat in the chair she pointed to.

As she rolled up his shirt sleeve, he mused, “I believe my wife would have liked you, Doctor.”

“Would she?” She applied the alcohol swab.

“Yes,” he confirmed, “She was a strong personality like yourself.”

“I’ve heard from Roger that family legend suspects that she was a witch.”

He gasped as the needle stabbed him; she apologized, as she depressed the plunger.

“No need to apologize, Doctor; I’m not used to feeling pain, that is all.” 

Their eyes met.

“That hurt you?” Her voice was a whisper.

His eyebrows were raised in astonishment.

“That-that hurt, Julia.” He had never yet addressed her by her name. “Is it a good sign?”

“Oh, Barnabas, Barnabas, I think it’s a very good sign!”

“I feel, Julia.” Two tears slowly traced his cheeks.

“Didn’t you before?”

“Not like this—I could feel thirst, textures, but it was all muted, not immediate, tlike when I was alive.”

“And now?”

“So much more intense. So much more real.” His hand went up to her cheek, rested against her fine boned face.

“Oh, Julia, how soft your skin is,” the words came out reverentially. “How did I never notice that you were beautiful?”

She pulled away. 

“I’m not beautiful. I’m a middle-aged woman, who’s well past her prime.”

He snorted, his eyes full of mischief.

“What? What’s funny?”

“You, Julia. You see but you do not observe. Your eyes are bright, your face is fair, your touch gentle and warm. And you do not realize it at all.”

“I learned very early that I was not made for love, but for learning.”

He rose from the chair; she stepped back.

“When the day comes that I can bask in the warmth of the Sun again, I will stand at the summit of this house, and there is only one person I want beside me on that day—you, Julia. I want to share that moment with you, and begin to know you properly.”

“Barnabas, you can’t mean that; I saw how you looked at Victoria Winters.”

“Like a friend Julia. She was my friend before, and I saw her age into a lovely matron—but her heart belonged to my dear friend Peter Bradford, my law partner.”

“But how—”

“I do not know. Perhaps I should tell you the story, and you could help me to understand.”

“Of course Barnabas.”

“Why don’t we go upstairs, and have a sherry, and I will tell you the true history of the Collins family.”

They left the basement together, Julia first, and as she mounted the stairs, he could not but appreciate her pert, neat figure. When they regained the parlor, Barnabas offered his favorite amontillado to her. Julia accepted, and as she took a sip, she watched Barnabas take his chair, pour his own glass, and imbibe a minute portion of the wine. Suddenly, he moaned.

“What’s amatter, Barnabas?” Willie Loomis left his polishing of the sideboard.

“Nothing, Willie,” he replied, “I just didn’t realize how wonderful it is to taste again. Julia, is not that amontillado superb?”

“It’s very nice,” she answered.

“Very nice?” He laughed, his old staccato laughter, not the metallic, mechanistic laugh of the vampire. “It’s ambrosia!”

Julia beamed.

“Willie, I’m hungry,” Barnabas looked to the startled man-of-all-work. “Could you make me an omelette?” 

“Uh, I only know how to scramble eggs, Barnabas.”

“Really? Come, I’ll show you how. You too, Julia.” He strode toward the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. 

“Willie,” he addressed his servant, “how does this work?”

“I, uh, got it from the big house; Roger was having it thrown away, but with Doctor Hoffman having us hooked up ta power, I figured it’d keep food fresher than the old icebox.”

Barnabas smiled again. “Good thinking, Willie. Well done.” He reached in and found eggs, cheese, butter, and drew them out.

“Sticks of butter,” he murmured to himself, “how do they do that? Willie, could you build a fire in the stove?”

“No need to, Barnabas; I had it hooked up to gas a couple weeks ago.”

“Good man. How are we paying for this?”

“Uh, I paid, ya know, so I could cook easier.”

“Of course. You must let me reimburse you.”

Now Willie smiled.

“Barnabas, how do you know how to cook?”

“Julia, when I was first married, against his wishes, my father cut me off without a cent. Angelique and I had to run this house—which my mother gave me—without any help at all. So I cooked. Among other things.”

As he spoke, describing the early days of his marriage to Angelique, he whisked the eggs, sliced cheese, added a carefully measured amount of onion to the mixture, and then gently introduced cheese to the concoction.

Willie showed him how to light the stove, and for the first time in a century and a half, Barnabas Collins made omelettes for his friends.

Willie made toast without being asked—Barnabas shouted “Good Heavens” when the bread shot up—and they carried their plates to Willie’s little table.

Willie took a careful bite, drawled the word “Wow” for longer than Barnabas thought could be done, and happily scarfed down his share. Julia enjoyed her nighttime snack.

Barnabas gingerly tasted the meal he had so expertly thrown together, and his eyes lit up. “Delicious,” he almost purred, and slowly, carefully, reintroduced food to his body.

When they had finished, Barnabas was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. 

“It’s almost dawn, isn’t it, Julia.”

“Yes, Barnabas.”

“How sad that I must go back into darkness.”

“Not for very much longer, Barnabas. We could be done in a few more weeks—six or so.”

“You have truly refashioned my world, Julia Hoffman. When you have finished, I will try to return the favor.”

“Enough of that,” she answered testily, “Go downstairs. We’ll see you at dusk.”  
Surprisingly, he did as he was told.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barnabas correctly describes the 19th Century practice of copyright theft from country to country, and I couldn't resist the notion that Joshua would of course take advantage of the legal loopholes that existed.


	26. The Dawn's Early Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Victoria Winters. As the sun rises over the Great House at Collinwood, a man's hopes for salvation turn to agony and dread, as the whole estate slumbers. Will his struggle for life reach its ultimate conclusion in the dawn's early light?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, at its dark heart, Dark Shadows is a soap opera.

Willie Loomis was tidying the kitchen shortly before the dawn would break. The darkness was still regnant over the sky, but the deep rich blackness of the night was lightening, fading toward a dark blue. As he finished up his work, he smiled at the unusually convivial night the unlikely troika had shared.

Yeah, he thought, heading toward the stairs, it had been a good night. A real good night, maybe the first of—and then he heard it.

His name bellowed in a reverberating, ululating cry—a cry the like of which he had heard only once before, the night Barnabas had thought that Willie had molested Victoria or Carolyn. 

As before, that only somewhat human scream chilled his heart with terror. But as he ran toward the locked door to the basement, and fumbled with his key, he processed the difference on this cry. 

It was not a cry of barely controlled rage; it was one of agony.

Willie managed to unlock the door, and clattered down the stairs, calling Barnabas’s name. He found his master trembling at the side of his coffin, seemingly unable to stand.

“You heard me, Willie,” the vampire sighed, and then convulsed, his entire body shuddering, hands scrabbling on the floor, as he sought any way to raise himself.

“Yeah, Barnabas—I’m here. Should I lift ya into the coffin?”

Barnabas tried to shake his head, but doubled over instead.

“No,” he forced out, “Pain. Too much pain. Get Julia.”

“Barnabas,” Willie’s panic was setting in, “I can’t leave ya here—the sun, it’ll smoke ya.”

Through his pain, Barnabas Collins smiled, a little sadly. Who else but Willie Loomis would care so much for the monster that had enslaved him? Still, his servant was right. Some instinct told Barnabas he did not dare enter the coffin in his present condition, but—he had it.

“Willie,” he rasped, “get me to the little room around the corner—it has a cot and has no exposure to any light unless someone brings a lamp.”

Willie hoisted Barnabas to his feet, and the vampire groaned. The smaller man staggered, but got him into the little room, which resembled nothing so much as a prison cell. As he carefully lowered Barnabas onto the cot, he asked, “What is this room, Barnabas?”

“My—my father… he used to bring goods through the house, down here…and from the tunnel back there ….take them to ships.”

“How come?”

Barnabas rolled his eyes, but replied, “The goods were not legal, Willie. A little smuggling in the Collins portfolio. Please—please get Julia.”

Willie blushed, stammered out an apology, and clattered back up the steps. Barnabas’s lips quirked momentarily upward.

“If this is death,” he said to the walls, “I welcome it. Rather die a man. . .than live a monster.”

The pain twisted within him once more, and, mercifully, consciousness deserted him.

Willie hammered at the door, terrified that he was already too late, until a disheveled Mrs. Johnson opened the door.

“Willie Loomis,” she thundered, “What do you want here?”

“Doctor Hoffman!” he interrupted her. “Barnabas was taken real sick just now. We need her at the Old House.”

Mrs. Johnson looked concerned, but then looked askance as Willie sprinted past her and thundered up the stairs, shouting for help.

“Whatever is going on, Loomis?” drawled Roger Collins, in his dressing gown.

“Barnabas!” Willie was trembling with anxiety. “He’s sick! Real bad! Needs Doctor Hoffman!” His breath was ragged, his face red.

Roger’s disdainful look vanished replaced with real concern. 

“Down the stairs, Loomis, and into the drawing room. You’re hyperventilating, man.”

He firmly led Willie down the stairs, pausing only when he heard his son’s voice.

“Father, is something wrong?”

“Yes, David, Cousin Barnabas has taken ill. Would you kindly wake Doctor Hoffman, and inform her that she is needed?”

“Of course, Father,” and as David flew back toward the bedrooms, Roger carefully brought Willie to the drawing room, and sat him down. He wrapped the multi-colored Afghan around Willie and poured two brandies, one small, and one large.

He placed the snifter with the most brandy in front of Willie, and the smaller drink in front of himself, sitting companionably next to Willie on the sofa.

“Have a sip, Loomis,” Roger ordered the younger man. “Don’t take too much at once, this is medicinal. Little sips.”

“Wh-why are”

Roger’s face looked more kind than Willie could ever remember seeing it.

“You’re in shock Willie; that’s why you’re cold, and you need a restorative. You need to be in better shape in case Doctor Hoffman needs help at the Old House.”

Roger drew on his own brandy, as Willie continued taking small draughts of his.

“I feel better,” he announced after roughly ten minutes. 

“Good,” Roger smiled, a smile that reached his eyes. “I think I hear Doctor Hoffman coming.”

Julia, eyes hooded, face drawn, entered the drawing room.

“Should I call an ambulance, Julia?” he asked.

“No, I think I know what’s wrong with him. I’ll send Willie back up if I’m wrong.”

“All right. Willie? Are you all right now?”

Willie rose, stretched a bit. 

“Yeah, I am—thanks, Mr. Collins.”

“Don’t mention it.”

As Willie and Julia went out into the early morning light, striding toward the Old House, Willie briefed her on all that happened. At length they reached their destination, and went to the little basement room where Willie had left Barnabas. 

The room reeked of foulness and of blood. Barnabas was weakly clutching the frame of the cot, coughing up red chunks. His elegant smoking jacket was clotted with unspeakable offal, rendering it patently beyond salvage.

“Oh, Julia,” he groaned, “I think I’m dying. Just like my poor Angelique…”

“What happened to her?”

“We were walking home after my father’s birthday party, and her leg…it sheered right out of her hip; the leg and the socket both riddled with cancer. She died, and now I’m dying,” he murmured.

“Let me see,” she replied, and gazed in horror at the mass of blood and filth daubed all over the cot. As she steered him into a chair in the little room, her fingers brushed his wrist, then she seized it for a few seconds, only to let it drop.

“Even if I am,” he continued, “I’m still grateful that you tried. Better to die as a man….” His voice trailed off, as she waved her compact under his lips and nose. Finally, she pushed him to the chair’s back, and her fingers slipped between shirt buttons.

“You’re not dying, Barnabas,” she pronounced firmly, a jaunty grin creasing her lips.

“Oh, but it hurts so badly.”

“I know. I can’t even imagine how much it hurts. But you’re not dying at all. You’re alive again.”

“What?”

“Before we started the experiment, you had no pulse, no heartbeat, no breath, except when you used air to talk. You have a heartbeat, Barnabas. You have a pulse. You’re breathing even when you are quiet.”

“But all the choking, all the—” He could not bring himself to go on.

She knelt in front of him, so that their eyes were at a level. 

“We didn’t think of it, I didn’t think of it,” she explained, “but on coming back to life, your body had to purge itself of all the dead tissue, all the residue of blood that you have consumed, and whatever else was lying fallow in your system. Even if I had thought of it, I don’t think there was any way I could have made it easier; your body had to decide whether it was dead or alive.”

“And?”

Her smile was radiant. “You’re alive Barnabas, you’re alive!”

Weakly, but smiling, he folded his arms about her and embraced her.

“Welcome back, Barnabas,” Julia returned the embrace, “Welcome back to life.”


	27. The Light of Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nights at Collinwood are very long. Barnabas Collins's long night has been especially so. But every night, at some point, ends. And every day must begin.

He slept through the day, and well into the night. Exhausted by the purging of dead tissue, and consumed gore, Barnabas Collins was utterly depleted.

Willie woke him briefly, and insisted he eat a bowl of soup that Mrs. Johnson had prepared. The shaky man managed to get half of it down, and keep it down.

He slept.

In his dreams, Angelique was smiling at him.

“Alive, my dearest!” she exulted “free from Diabolos, the curse ended.”

“Don’t you mind?” He worried.

Shaking her head with her long-missed loving frown, as if he were Bramwell having erred in a childish way, her luminous eyes dimmed with tears.

“Mind!” She exclaimed. “Mind! I am gone beyond recall, Barnabas! I am no ghost, seeking to finish my life’s business. No, my dearest, we will meet again, but in good time. Live, dearest Barnabas, live and be happy!”

He awoke then, his own eyes wet. A dream? A visitation?

“Goodbye for now, sweet Angelique!” he cried out, realizing that either way she had not been possessive of him once he had opened his heart to her.

He had loved her, with all that he was, and always would love her.

But not to the exclusion of living. Whether it was Angelique or his own image of her, Barnabas knew well enough that life as a recluse, a life of solitude, would not suit him.

He drowsed, and then slept again.

Once more, he dreamed—of fiery red hair, a strong, high cheek-boned face, with intelligent, far-seeing eyes.

He slept, and dreamed of his family.

His sacred dead.

Finally, he dreamed of his victims. Those he had killed, before he could control his needs enough to avoid draining them completely. Of Willie, so dependent on him.  
How would that change, he wondered, as he tumbled back one last time into sleep.

Finally, Barnabas Collins awoke.

It was dark, and the remnant of his soul that was still attuned to the night informed him that dawn was a few hours off. He stretched himself, painfully loosening the muscles of his back, his neck, his legs. 

He was breathing a bit heavily—no, he was simply breathing. 

He began to make his way out of the little cell he had spent at least one, and possibly two days in. He found his way up into the kitchen, and found a bag of—oh, let it be, he thought, please!—coffee beans, just ready to be brewed.

He was sure that Willie had some new, electrically powered method, but he found, as a benison, Angelique’s old mortar and pestle, and poured just enough beans into the mortar to make a pot of coffee, as he had done every day of his life, until it had ended. 

As Barnabas brewed coffee, he heard movement, a person—a man—slumping down the stairs. Sure enough, Willie Loomis entered the kitchen.

“Coffee, Barnabas?”

“Unless you want to go back to bed, Willie? Dawn’s a ways off yet, you know.”

“Yeah, but it smells too good to turn down.”

“Of course, Willie.” Barnabas poured a cup for Willie and then one for himself. 

Barnabas tipped the mug to his lips, sipped the dark, rich brew, swallowed, and sighed, like a cat, dry after a long soaking.

“I may be sentimental, Willie,” he breathed, “but that tastes better than any cup of coffee has a right to.”

“Yeah,” Willie smiled at his employer, “How’d ya do it? Its nicer than what I grind up in th’ machine.”

When Julia Hoffman joined them, Barnabas was teaching Willie how to use the mortar and pestle.

“I dunno, Barnabas; lotta work, that grinding ya do.”

“I thought you’d agreed it tastes better than your own,” Barnabas’s offended look was utterly unconvincing.

“How about a cup for a tired old physician who’s had almost no sleep in 48 hours?” Julia’s voice was mock-plaintive.

“I would happily serve such a benefactor of humanity, Doctor Hoffman, but I only see a scintillating woman of considerable charm before me.” Barnabas passed her the filled cup.

Sipping it, Julia let out a sound that was almost a squawk. It was rather endearing, he could not help but notice.

“Not to your liking?” 

“It’s delicious!” she exclaimed. “I could follow that scent all the way down the Eastern seaboard!”

“No, need, Doctor,” he replied, “I shall always be delighted to brew some up for you.”

The light suffusing the Old House changed; Barnabas knew it was time.

“Julia,” he took her hand, eyes meeting hers in joyful solemnity, “come up with me to the Master Bedroom. We can see the sunrise together.”

“Barnabas, we don’t know that it’s safe yet,” she expostulated.

“You can pull me back from the window if it isn’t.”

“All right,” she conceded. He took her arm and escorted her up the stairs. As they reached the second story, and entered the room Barnabas and Angelique had shared, Julia’s arm clutched his slightly. She was worried, Barnabas reflected.

But he was not. He was breathing, moving like a human being again. If he was still debarred from the sunshine, his lot was still so much improved. 

Julia cast her eyes about the room, taking in the portrait of Angelique, a smaller one of himself in early middle age, and miniatures of the children. Barnabas slowly, calmly walked toward the heavy curtains at the large central window—the very window he had driven Diabolos out from.

“Let me,” Julia insisted, pushing him slightly to the side, “let me.”

He obliged; he owed this strange, marvelous woman so much, how could he not indulge her protective streak? 

Julia moved the curtains aside, raised the old wooden slat-shades enough to let a pale golden beam into the long-deserted house.

Barnabas could not help himself—he stretched his hand out into the sunbeam.

“Barnabas, no!” she had just exhaled, when she saw that his hand was unharmed.

“Open it a little more, Julia.”

She complied, and then repeated the action, until Barnabas stood before her, bathed in the early morning sunlight. 

The fresh clothes she and Willie had dressed him in, a darker smoking jacket that clearly dated to Barnabas’s interrupted life in this house, a clean but ancient shirt, and a pair of britches, suited him, transformed him back into a man of his time, as handsome as she had initially thought him. But she felt the decades between them; suddenly, he seemed untouchable to her.

And then he reached out to her, and pulled her into his arms, for a joyful, loving kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No deep allusions this chapter. Just what should have happened after Julia's curing Barnabas in HODS and in the main storyline. If my Angelique and Barnabas seem more benevolent than the origins, well--they had a happy quarter century of love to share; Angelique died knowing she was loved as well as she loved, and Barnabas has regrets and pain, but happy memories of their marriage and children.
> 
> The road not taken did not just make him a better man; it gave him much greater ability to fight the evil within.


	28. A Man in Full

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Victoria Winters. A beautiful peaceful day at the Great House at Collinwood. We have heard that Barnabas Collins has recovered from his illness, and that Doctor Hoffman is with him. Strange that I feel so close a rapport with a man I barely know. And yet, as the day draws on, ever closer to evening, I feel danger surrounding me....

Barnabas broke the kiss, but still clung to Julia, stepping back slightly to clearly see her upturned face. Her smile was brilliant, her eyes sparkling.

“Julia, will you walk with me in the daylight? It has been so very long.”

“Of course I will, Barnabas. But might we have breakfast first?”

He laughed, a short staccato bark Angelique or any his children would have recognized as evidence of his highest spirits. 

“Come, Julia, I will make you a feast.”

Together they came down the stairs, and wound their way to the kitchen. Barnabas opened the curtains, and surveyed the various cabinets, assessing the supplies Willie had laid in. His eyes lit up at the buckwheat flour, and Julia retrieved eggs and bread. As Barnabas ground and brewed fresh coffee, Julia began preparing an egg dish she had created while in medical school, Willie dragged himself down the stairs and joined them.

“Hey,” he began, and then realized the sunlight was streaming in through the window, and right onto Barnabas’s face. “Hey, it worked? Barnabas? It worked?”

“As you see,” the Master of the Old House smiled. “Willie, we’re free. Both of us.”

“Ya mean?”

“I mean that if you want to remain in my employ, we can regularize matters; I’d be happy to pay you a proper salary, and we can continue to restore this house. Or, if you prefer, you can leave when you’ve found a job more to your liking.”

“I never had a regular job, ‘cept as a sailor, Barnabas. Can I think it over? I know I don’t wanna be a grifter any more.”

“Take all the time you need, Willie. You are always welcome here, and I would be happy to create a more equitable working relationship between us.”

Barnabas returned to his preparations.

“Griddle cakes today, I think,” he announced, “in addition to Julia’s egg dish. Have you ever had Finnish griddle cakes? They’re much thinner than what we Americans are used to.”

“Don’t you mean crepes?”

“No, Julia, quite different. You’ll see.”

“Howdya know how ta make them, Barnabas?”

“When I was at sea, Willie, the ship’s cook was a Finn. He was very proud of his Finnish griddle cakes—and woe betide the man who called them crepes, Julia.”

“You was at sea, Barnabas?”

“That’s how I first came to Martinique; I was second mate on one of my father’s ships, learning the family business. That’s how I first met my Angelique.” He smiled, then, a smile tinged with just a touch of sorrow.

“We should compare notes, Barnabas; I was at Martinique, and at Africa and China too!”

Barnabas smiled. “Martinique was so important to me that I sometimes forget the rest of my travels. Yes, Willie, we should compare notes. Let’s have breakfast first. Would you set the table?”

As Willie set the table, Julia and Barnabas each finished their contribution to the meal, and brought the dishes to the table. As they began to eat, Willie gently nudged Julia, and gestured toward Barnabas, whose rapturous expression as he tasted his own creation brought a broad grin to her face. Catching the byplay, Barnabas raised an eyebrow, and then smiled back.

“I know, I know,” he laughed, “but this is my second proper meal in nearly one hundred and fifty years. You have no idea what it is to have lost the sensation of taste—of breathing, even—and to miraculously have them returned.”

Julia’s smile softened. She had done this for him, she reflected, succeeded in reclaiming the man from the monster. Even if his affectionate protestations were merely gratitude, at least she had a major place in his friendships. But how painful it would be to see him pursue some other woman.

As they ate, Willie and Barnabas shared stories of their adventures at sea. Willie told a hair-raising story about Jason McGuire’s fast-talking and charm saving their lives at Cape Horn, and Barnabas countered with a spooky tale of voodoo and revenge in his first landing at Martinique. Describing the terrible choice he had been confronted with when he was still little more than a boy, he shook his head in remembrance. 

Finally, his voice unusually gravelly, he simply uttered, “Fate plays cruel tricks on those who remember.” 

Willie shuddered lightly, nodding in understanding. “Yeah,” he whispered, and the two men’s eyes met with mutual remembrance of past perils and the cost of survival. Julia rose, and stalked to the kitchen. She returned with a plate of tarts she had bought yesterday in the village, in the hope that this day would mark Barnabas’s freedom from the curse.

The somber mood passed, as the men fell upon Julia’s offering with childlike greed. Julia had already discerned Willie’s sweet tooth (she feared diabetes in his future if he did not tend to himself as he aged), but had not expected Barnabas to fall to with such gusto.

He excused his response, noting that in his day baked goods were considerably simpler, and, finishing his coffee, looked with satisfaction at his companions.

“Of course, thanks to you both, today is my day. I can never express my gratitude sufficiently. But I feel toward you both as the Count Du Près once did toward my father: ‘It may be worth much or little, but hereafter you both may call me from the other side of hell itself, and I will come to your side!’” 

After helping Willie clear the table, Barnabas offered Julia his arm. She took it, and the two exited the Old House. As they strolled the grounds, Barnabas regaled Julia with stories of life in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. He told her of the pleasure he had found as an advocate and how much he wished he could return to it.

“Why can’t you?”

“Julia, the practice must be remarkably different all these years later. And law school? My son Bramwell was one of the first to attend it. I am far too old for such a course of study.”

“You can still read for the Bar in Maine,” she replied.

“How do you know that?” His eyes darted to her face.

“I-I knew you would not wish to be idle, and I can’t see you as a businessman, so I looked into it in case you were missing your old profession.”

“How very clever you are, dear Julia. You know me so well, on such relatively short acquaintance.” 

“I researched your career at the Bar Library in Bangor,” she admitted a little shyly. “I wanted to know about you.”

“You couldn’t have found much. Lawyers’ victories fade very quickly into oblivion.”

“Not yours,” she replied, “Peter Bradford saw to that. He used several of your cases in his second book. It was a guide to advocacy in trials and appeals. The trials section is all about you. He dedicated the book to your memory.”

Barnabas stopped short. His eyes misted over.

“Peter did that for me?”

“Yes. The book was published shortly before he died, in 1824.”

“Too young. Poor Peter. Poor Victoria.”

“Poor Victoria? Victoria Winters?”

He led her to a lovely old maple tree, one that he recognized from his own time, and they sat down together on his Inverness cape, which he carefully spread out. 

“I have a story to tell you, Julia. You and you alone.”

He began with the strange appearance of the beautiful, eccentrically dressed young governess at the Old House in 1795, and took her through the entire tale—Victoria’s witchcraft trial (“Bradford told the story in his book, but I had no idea he was writing about his own wife!” she interjected), their long-standing friendship, their support when Angelique had died, and, at the end, her comforting him so soon before his own death.

“Incredible,” she sighed. “I wouldn’t believe it if anyone else on earth told me the story.”

They reclined under the tree; as the sun reached its zenith, he asked if she were hungry.

“Not after that feast we had this morning. Do you want to go back?”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t be happier than where I am right now; basking in the sweet light of day and with you, Julia.” He drew her in for a kiss, a long passionate one. After the kiss was broken, she sighed his name, and he kissed her again. After a while, they held each other gently, and fell asleep. 

Julia awoke long before Barnabas. She watched him slumbering peacefully, a childlike smile etched upon his face. As the sun was beginning to set, she shook him awake. He was refreshed by the hours long nap, but gently chided her for letting him sleep while she was left with nothing to do.

“You needed it, and I enjoyed the afternoon,” she retorted without heat. They rose, and as the light faded into twilight, she shivered a little. He draped her in his cloak, and they ambled back toward the Old House. As they neared the door, their path intersected with that of little David Collins.

“Cousin Barnabas!” David smiled, a smile whose import Julia quickly divined—the sun had not yet set, and here was the proof he had needed that his cousin was not a vampire.

Barnabas greeted the boy cheerfully, inviting him into the Old House. As they entered, and Barnabas helped Julia remove the cloak, David cheerfully informed him that his father had sent him as a messenger to invite Barnabas and Doctor Hoffman to the Great House for dinner that evening.

“How very kind,” Barnabas replied.

“Yeah, and there’s going to be a séance tonight, Cousin Barnabas!”

Barnabas and Julia looked at each other; the excited boy asked “Will you come? I’ve never been at a séance!”

Gravely, Barnabas answered, “I will be there, David.”

“So will I,” Julia chimed in, “We’ll be there in an hour.”

“Great!” the boy grinned happily, “see you then! Aunt Elizabeth told me to let you know that cocktails will be at six o’clock.”

Mission accomplished, David headed back toward the Great House.

“What is it, Barnabas?”

“Victoria. Tonight may be the night we lose her to the past.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barnabas's hinted at story is given in full in Big Finish's 2010 audio drama "The Night Whispers" which reunited Jonathan Frid and John Karlen as Barnabas and Willie for the first time since the end of the series. Frid's voice is somewhat the worse for wear, but he and Karlen are wonderful together. The audio marks the last time Frid played the role, and the only time he did so after the series.
> 
> The remark attributed to the Count Du Près is adapted from George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman at the Charge.


	29. Anangke: The Call from Beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My name is Victoria Winters. It is a time of peace at Collinwood. My fiancee Burke Devlin and Roger Collins, who has become a friend to me, are trying to rebuild their own long-broken friendship. Barnabas's sickness is past, and David is settling down. Only Carolyn, my dear friend, is suffering. And she has been advised that only by communicating with a spirit that haunts the great estate can her suffering be ended. I fear the outcome of this night, although I cannot say why."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Millicent's chant is excerpted from "Of the Pythagorean Philosophy: From the Fifteenth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses," as translated by John Dryden, in "The Poems of John Dryden," ed. John Sargeaunt. London: Oxford University Press, 1913.
> 
> The concept of "Anangke" is drawn from "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies (McClelland & Stewart, 1994).
> 
> The image of Millicent floating above is inspired by Dark Shadows: The Revival (1991) in which Angelique, as portrayed by Lysette Anthony, appears in just such a way on several occasions.

Throughout dinner at the Great House, Barnabas Collins was in sparkling style. He and Roger matched each other in humorous asides, he gently drew David into the conversation, and delighted the boy by offering him an open invitation to the Old House, as long as he avoided the cellar.

“Willie is still clearing up some damage in the cellar, David,” he explained, “and as soon as it is safe, you can explore to your heart’s content—but let me know what you find!”

Elizabeth thanked her cousin, “Really, Barnabas, I do hope you don’t end up regretting your hospitality—you will behave, won’t you, David?”

“Sure I will, Aunt Elizabeth. Um, Barnabas--”

“Yes, David?”

“Can I still visit Millicent?”

Roger repressed a sigh, his face remained calm and friendly. He would not browbeat David for his fantasies, he admonished himself, Doctor Hoffman had said that his liking for his imaginary friend could be quite healthy for a boy his age, and so he held his piece. Surprisingly, this was becoming easier with practice.

Julia smiled approvingly at Roger, who dipped his head in chivalrous acknowledgement.

“Of course you may, David,” Barnabas allowed, “please give her my very best regards when you see her.”

Carolyn rolled her eyes, but said nothing, until the conversation ebbed, and then she asked Vickie, “Isn’t Burke joining us tonight?”

“He should be here in time for the séance,” she replied. 

Roger retained his friendly bearing, at some cost to his pride. Burke had been forbearing since Roger had confessed his guilt to the manslaughter for which Burke had served time. He had finally accepted that Burke would not report him to the police, but the stinging sense of guilt his former friend’s mercy had awoken was hard for him to bear.

“Are you all right, Uncle Roger?”

“Yes, Kitten, I’m fine.”

Carolyn’s gaze sharpened. “You’re not angry that we invited Burke, are you?”

“Not in the least. Devlin and I have made up our differences. He is welcome at Collinwood, as far as I am concerned.”

Mrs. Johnson entered the dining room, and addressed Elizabeth.

“Mr. Devlin is here, Ma’am. Should I have him wait in the drawing room?”

Before Elizabeth could answer, Roger stood up. 

“Does anybody mind if I invite him to join us? We’ve only barely started, after all.”

Nobody objected, largely because they were all too startled by Roger’s seizing the initiative. Victoria was pleased to have her beau join the family, and smilingly nodded at Roger. As he left the room, Mrs. Johnson set a fresh place at the table, between Victoria and Carolyn.

After a few minutes, Roger showed a smiling Burke Devlin into the dining room. He sat at the empty place, ensconced between his two favorites within the house. Roger reclaimed his own place, and resumed his own meal.

With Devlin among them, the conversation fragmented into a series of smaller conversations—between Burke, Carolyn, and Vickie, between Roger and Barnabas, and between Julia and David. Jason McGuire and Elizabeth were conversing, with Elizabeth’s eyebrows raising as the Irishman’s gentle voice poured into her ear.

At length, Elizabeth replied, with rather more emphasis than she intended, “You mean it? I can rely on your word.”

Jason nodded. “Implicitly, Liz. I’ll prove it to you whenever you wish.”

“And you think it enough?”

“That’s for you to say. I started this the wrong way round, but I wish to correct that. Will you allow me to?”

Her answer was a long time coming.

“I—I don’t know, Jason. It’s quite a change. You’ll prove it, you say?”

“I do, and I shall.”

“Let me think on it, Jason. I need time to consider.”

“Of course you do, Liz. No pressure. Just a good faith offer.”

She smiled tentatively.

At length, dinner and dessert were consumed, and all filed into the drawing room, except for Roger, who went upstairs to change into his smoking jacket. When he rejoined the company, Burke was passing out drinks.

“Something for you, Roger?” It was the first time Devlin had addressed him by his given name since his confession. Roger tried to accept it as a means to papering over the long-festering breach.

“A brandy, thank you, Burke—though I should be playing host—good of you to cover for me.”

“My pleasure, Roger.” He handed him a snifter, filled just as he liked it. Roger smiled. Funny the trivial details of former friendship that one retained; he still knew exactly how Burke liked his martinis. 

“Aren’t you having something, Burke? A martini?”

“You know I’m terrible at making them, Roger.”

“Allow me. One Devlin special coming right up.” Without waiting for a response, Roger went to the drinks cabinet, and began preparing the cocktail. As he handed it to his former friend, he saw that Devlin’s smile reached his eyes. Burke sipped it, and sighed.

“Perfect. How do you do it, Roger?”

“You only flirt with the vermouth, Burke—it should taste like a cold cloud.”

“That’s just how I remember it!”

As they consumed their aperitifs, the party became less constrained. Finally, drinks and cigarettes consumed, they were ready for the business of the evening.

“We are all here tonight for a purpose,” Elizabeth addressed them, “Carolyn has been oppressed by a series of nightmares, and she has consulted Professor Stokes, who has advised her that—oh, Carolyn, are you sure?”

“Yes, Mother, I am. I have had these nightmares for over a month now, and they are all the same—a woman who looks just like me, throwing herself from Widow’s Hill, and dying on the rocks below. She is screaming, and I can’t make out what she is saying. Professor Stokes suggested a séance held by our family and friends could help us bring her peace.”

Barnabas’s expression was grave indeed.

“Are you all right, Barnabas?”

“Yes, Julia. Just a little—apprehensive.”

They gathered into a circle around the table, and listened to Carolyn’s strictures on the rules—hands touching, no negative thoughts, and above all not to break the circle. David was allowed to participate, Carolyn explained, because he had seen a spirit that resembled Carolyn on multiple occasions.

They began invoking the spirit, inviting it to join them, imploring it to manifest to them.

Julia was keenly aware of Barnabas’s sudden pallor.

The air above the table seemed to suddenly tear, accompanied by a harsh grating noise, and an image of a woman, strikingly like Carolyn, hovered above them, dressed in a billowing white gown.

“Millicent!” David cried out, and her soft eyes took in his visage.

“Fate,” the woman groaned, and repeated “Fate. It cannot be avoided. I have tried, tried to protect you, protect you all.”

Her gaze fell upon Barnabas.

“Yes, even you, Cousin Barnabas. I failed you, I know, but fate—Anangke—must be served, and, oh, here it is upon us, again!”

“Anangke!” Barnabas breathed out.

The floating specter began to chant:

Then, Death, so call’d, is but old Matter dress’d   
In some new Figure, and a vary’d Vest:   
Thus all Things are but alter’d, nothing dies;   
And here and there th’ unbodied Spirit flies,   
By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossest,   
And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast;   
Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find,   
And actuates those according to their kind;   
From Tenement to Tenement is toss’d;   
The Soul is still the same, the Figure only lost:   
And, as the soften’d Wax new Seals receives,   
This Face assumes, and that Impression leaves;   
Now call’d by one, now by another Name;   
The Form is only chang’d, the Wax is still the same:   
So Death, so call’d, can but the Form deface,   
Th’ immortal Soul flies out in empty space;   
To seek her Fortune in some other Place.

A terrifying sound rended the air again, far more loudly than when Millicent appeared to them. She faded, and disappeared from view.

Elizabeth screamed.

“Turn on the lights, Turn on the lights!” she howled in utter desolation. Roger flew to oner set of switched; David to the other. When the lights dispelled the darkness, Victoria Winters was nowhere to be seen.


	30. Anangke: Return of the Native

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria Winters has journeyed through time, in a terrifying voyage to the year 1795. Surviving enmities, scandal, and the loss of her friend Barnabas, she has been, after three decades, returned to her own time, where she has seemingly been gone for less than hour.

As the small gathering still sat in their chairs, still circling the table, Elizabeth rose shakily.

“Barnabas, what did the gho-that woman mean by those strange words she kept saying—an ank key, was it?”

“No, Elizabeth. Not three words, one word: Anangke. It means inevitability, necessity. Destiny, even.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure that I understand how it applies here, Elizabeth.”

“Aren’t you? You knew what she was saying!” 

“Yes, Elizabeth, I did.” Barnabas rose from his chair, and stepped toward Elizabeth, who was frowning at him.

“Elizabeth, my father insisted that I have a classical education, and Anangke is a part of that. Do you remember Oedipus Rex?”

“Yes.”

“Oedipus wanted nothing more than to avoid the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He took every possible precaution, and what happened? He was challenged by Laius, and went on to marry Jocasta, not knowing that they were his parents. Some fates cannot be avoided, is what Anangke tells us.”

Elizabeth began to weep, turning away from Barnabas. Jason McGuire enfolded her in his arms, and, surprisingly, she accepted his comfort. Roger’s startlement and worry where shared by Carolyn and Devlin alike.

“Barnabas,” McGuire tried over Elizabeth’s shoulder, and the sound of her weeping, “Does Anangke mean only that Victoria has some inescapable destiny, or can you tell us anything about it?”

“The former, not the latter, Mr. McGuire,” he replied, going on to add, “I suspect that there is one thing we can discern from what has happened.”

“What’s that?” Julia asked first.

“Millicent Collins was the daughter of Joshua Collins who built this house. She was a woman of the Eighteenth and the early Nineteenth Centuries.”

“And?”

“If she was somehow sent to summon Miss Winters to her fate, that fate may well be in that time, and not ours.”

“You mean she could be stranded in the Nineteenth Century for the rest of her life?”

“No!” Elizabeth shouted.

“It is only a theory, Elizabeth, but I think it could be true—”

Neither of them had a chance to speak, as the room began to violently shake.

Jason still held Elizabeth, David ran to his father, and found refuge in his arms. Burke’s eyes darted around the room, looking for an antagonist to defeat. A particularly rough tremor pitched Julia into Barnabas’s arms, and he held her, whispering in her ear.

The lights went out. 

The tremors stopped, and after a moment, the lights came back on. 

Dressed in the style of the 1820s, Victoria Winters was sitting in her chair.

***  
As she rose to her feet, Victoria scanned the room.

“It can’t be…” She whispered.

Burke stammered “W-what happened to you, Vic-Victoria?”

“What do you mean, Burke?” she smiled.

“Miss Winters! Miss Winters!”

“David!” She was delighted to see her charge again, and then read his expression. “What’s wrong, David? Why are you looking at me that way?”

“Miss Winters,” he mewed plaintively, “You got old!”

“Vickie, Vickie, what’s happened to you?” Elizabeth sobbed.

“I—I what?” Her eyes lighted on Barnabas and Julia.

“Barnabas, thank God you’re here! What’s happened?”

“You aren’t the young woman who lived here earlier this evening,” he said carefully.

Julia passed her compact to Victoria.

She opened it, and gazed at her reflection.

She saw a woman in her early fifties, still slim, but not with the girlish slimness Victoria had taken pride in both in her days at Collinwood and in her time at the Old House. Her hair was still dark and lustrous, albeit with a long white streak that she rather liked. Her face was slightly fuller, her hands a little bit weathered, but far from those of a crone.

“Barnabas, you’ve seen—” She cut herself off, her mouth in a little circle of alarm. After a moment’s thought, and with a little crooked smile, she said, “You’ve seen worse sights than a middle aged lady, haven’t you?”

He nodded in sympathetic understanding, and appreciation.

“Have I become hideous?”

“Certainly not,” Roger answered, “But I’ll bet you could do with a drink. Brandy?”

“Well, under the circumstances, Roger—yes, please.”

As Roger walked to the sideboard, she turned to Burke.

“Burke? Don’t you recognize me?”

“Yes-but, but—you’re so changed!”

He stood rooted to the spot; he could not even meet her eyes.

Roger brought her a snifter of brandy.

“Are you cold? Do you want to change into more familiar clothes?”

She smiled gently. “No, thank you, Roger. I think I’m a bit . . . mature for the dresses I left behind. Besides, I’ve been wearing these kinds of clothing for, oh, nearly thirty years.”

“Thirty years!” Elizabeth approached her. “You’ve been living for thirty years in the past!”

“Yes, Mrs. Stoddard.” She hesitated. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course I am, darling!” She embraced the governess warmly. “You must know that I am! I’m just sorry for all the years you’ve lost!”

“But I didn’t lose them, Mrs. Stoddard. I lived them. I was married to a wonderful man who loved me, and I had very good friends who protected me.” 

“M-married, Victoria?”

“Yes, Burke,” she smiled at the lover of her youth. “My husband was the first Chief Justice of the State of Maine. When I was accused of witchcraft, he and—he and the Barnabas Collins who lived in 1795 defended me at my trial, and I was acquitted. They saved my life.”

“So you married this—what was his name, Victoria?”

“Burke, I married Peter because I loved him, not because he and the other Barnabas saved my life.”

“I’m sorry, Vickie,” Burke replied.

“I understand. It’s a shock to all of us, isn’t it, my dear?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s a shock,” he murmured. 

She looked around the room, savoring the faces of the friends of her youth. Her gaze raked Barnabas quickly, and as their eyes met, she winked.

David haltingly asked, “But you are happy to be back with us, aren’t you?”

Victoria knelt, and opened her arms to the boy. “Of course I am, David! I’m so very glad to see you again! I am so very glad to see all of you aagain!”

And the Collins family closed in on their missing friend, and welcomed her, pelting her with questions, and kissing her, and embracing her. Only when they had welcomed Victoria back with champagne that Roger fetched did they realize that Burke Devlin had quietly departed.

**Author's Note:**

> My first (solo) story here; comments and feedback very welcome. Typos and solecisms all my own, as the story was written without a beta. True confession: Barnabas's definition of love was lovingly nicked from Steven Moffat. Chapters should average 1,000 words, and I hope you'll enjoy the ride through alternative Collinsport history.


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